


Alone

by Melinda Y (HowNovel)



Series: Starman Trilogy [2]
Category: Starman (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1989-03-25
Updated: 1989-03-25
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:43:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 49,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HowNovel/pseuds/Melinda%20Y
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part 2 of the Starman Trilogy</p><p>Paul becomes the victim of a "hit" and suffers amnesia. He and Scott are separated, and Scott must plan for survival alone, all the time "knowing" in his heart his father isn't dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone

Alone

 

Paul and Scott were on their way west through Minnesota when Paul checked in with Liz Baynes. She had a potential job lined up for Paul as a photographer with an investigative magazine in Omaha, Nebraska. But she had a warning: “He said he’s ready to pay top-dollar. Kevin’s been a friend since journalism school. He wouldn’t say top-dollar unless there was a reason. You better find out what he’s paying for before you take the job.”

They hitched to Omaha and had no trouble finding the offices of the magazine, “The Light of the Plains.” Paul checked in with the receptionist, and he was quickly ushered into the managing editor’s office.

Kevin McMahon was the image of the cigar-chomping, no-prisoners journalist. Built square and stocky, he was obviously a man who was used to accomplishing what he set out to do. He gave Paul a quick once-over as he rose to shake Paul’s hand. “So, you’re the famous Paul Forrester.”

Paul smiled. “Yes. And you’re the famous Kevin -” he glanced at McMahon’s nameplate on his desk “- McMahon.”

McMahon laughed gruffly. “There’s nothing famous about me, Forrester. I let people like you take all the glory. Did Binnie tell you about me?”

Paul blinked. “Binnie?”

“Liz. It’s a stupid nickname I gave her in J-school. You remember Binnie Barnes? The actress?” McMahon waited for Paul to make the connection. “Binnie Barnes? Binnie Baynes?”

Paul still wasn’t getting it, but he concluded this was something he was supposed to know. “Oh, yes,” he said with a smile. McMahon nodded. “All she said about you was you’ve been her friend since journalism school,” Paul explained. “And you wouldn’t offer top-dollar unless you had a reason.”

McMahon let out a hearty laugh. “That’s Binnie. Yup, I’m willing to pay big bucks. But you’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way and earn it. I’ve got an assignment that calls for someone who can find a way to get the job done against all the odds. Someone like you.”

“Why me?”

“Anyone who can walk away from that Mount Hawthorne assignment is my kind of guy.”

Paul’s face clouded over. “What do you want me to do?”

McMahon sat at his desk. “There’s a small fertilizer distributor in Omaha -- Farmers Chemicals Cooperative -- that’s been providing chemical fertilizers for the farmers around here for very low costs. They manage to keep their costs low by illegally dumping the wastes wherever it suits them, and lately it’s been suiting them to dump out in the Missouri River south of here. We know they’re doing it, and they know we know -- but we haven’t been able to prove it. Until now. We’ve got a contact inside the organization who has given us certain information. But we can’t nail these people until we catch them actually dumping the stuff in the river. Your job is to get ‘em on film red-handed.”

Paul wondered why their hands had to be red. It must have to do with the chemicals. “Big bucks,” he said thoughtfully. “How big?”

“If you can get them dumping with identifiable faces and trucks and the whole nine yards -- ten thousand dollars.”

Paul’s eyes bugged out. “Ten thousand dollars!”

“But it won’t be easy,” McMahon warned. “These people will do whatever it takes to save their hides. If the EPA gets one whiff of what they’re doing, ...” McMahon drew his finger across his throat and made a ripping sound. Paul flinched. McMahon looked at him, a twinkle in his eye. “Well, what about it, Forrester? Want to fight the good fight?”

“I don’t want to fight, but I’ll take the pictures for you.”

McMahon got up enthusiastically and shook Paul’s hand. “Great. Go down to production and pick up whatever film you need. Where are you staying?”

“I don’t know yet. My son and I just got here.”

McMahon looked at Paul quizzically. “Son? You have a son?”

Paul smiled proudly. “Yes. His name’s Scott Hayden. He’s 16.”

McMahon shook his head. “Well, you learn something new every day. Tell you what -- this job may take awhile. Why don’t you and your son stay in a vacant rental property I’ve got? It isn’t much, but it’s a roof and four walls.”

Paul frowned. “Does it have a bathroom?”

McMahon scoffed. “Gimme a break. I can’t be a slum lord and work in a place like this. I’d have to do an exposé on myself.” He escorted Paul to the office door. “You two can stay as long as you need. I’ll write off the rent as a business expense.” He stopped and patted Paul on the back with unexpected gratitude. “Thanks for taking this on. I know we can stop these bastards.” He sent Paul on his way.

******

McMahon’s rental house was modest but perfect for Paul and Scott’s needs. Located in a quiet neighborhood three blocks from a high school, the little place was complete with furnishings, linens and appliances. It even had a garden in the fenced back yard, although several frosts had killed everything for the year. An advance of $500 paid for a small rental car and a feast to celebrate their good fortune. But Scott was worried about his father’s casual air regarding the assignment.

“Dad, this could be dangerous,” Scott said as they finished dinner. “I mean, these guys are breaking the law. Remember what Liz Baynes said.”

“I don’t see what’s so dangerous about it. I take the pictures of them and then I take the film to the magazine. What’s so dangerous about that?”

“Well, what if they see you?”

“Then I’ll leave. Besides, I’m sure they’ll be busy with what they’re doing, so they won’t notice me.” Paul smiled at his son. “It’ll be all right, Scott. I promise to be careful.”

******

Paul got Scott enrolled in the neighborhood high school the next day, and then he went to work. McMahon gave him a map with several sites marked along the river about 50 miles south of the city, and on McMahon’s instructions he went everyday to Point A before dawn and stayed until after twilight. Sitting out by the river all day didn’t bother him. The spot was a natural bird sanctuary, and the variety of birds fascinated him. He found himself taking photos of the river and its abundant wildlife. He didn’t understand why someone would want to dump toxic chemicals in such a beautiful place.

McMahon was impressed with Paul’s nature photos, scratching his head over his uncanny luck. “How you can get such great shots without a blind is beyond me.”

Paul simply shrugged with a smile. “They know I’m not going to hurt them.”

McMahon told him about the spring migrational roost of the sandhill cranes out on the Platte River, and he joked that if they didn’t get a break on this story Paul might still be around in March to do a photo essay on the cranes. Paul liked that assignment idea.

******

A week went by with no result other than the wildlife shots. Then late Thursday night Paul received a phone call from an excited McMahon. “Go to Point B before dawn tomorrow,” he said breathlessly. “

My contact says they’ve been loading unmarked trucks all day and there’s been talk about Point B. I think we got ‘em!”

******

Paul left the house before 4 a.m. Scott had always awakened to have breakfast with him, but this morning he slept in. Paul wrote him a note explaining where he was. Then as he was about to leave he remembered some groceries they needed. On the back of the note he jotted down a short list, then paperclipped a $50 bill to the note. He left, driving away into the night.

******

When Scott woke up, he discovered the note and the money. He didn’t see the grocery list on the back, and he was elated at the cash. He had mentioned to his dad that kids at school had invited him along to a football game and he would need some pizza money. But $50! He could handle this. He tucked the money in his billfold and decided he could afford breakfast out this morning.

******

Dawn was cold and gray on the river that morning. Sitting in the reeds by the river’s edge since before first light, Paul was getting a little stiff in the frosty air. There was no cover in this stretch of the river, and he had had to park the car nearly a mile away in a grove of trees. He didn’t like being so far from the car, but there was nothing else he could do. He was also beginning to regret having left his leather jacket at home. This camouflage fatigue jacket Scott had insisted he wear had seemed a good idea, but it did very little about keeping the cold out. He wondered if his cold, stiff fingers would be able to work the camera if something happened.

******

Then, as the sky brightened, Paul heard engines approaching the river. A quarter mile away he could see trucks with their headlights off moving slowly to the bank. He was glad he had loaded the camera with ASA 3200 film, and he pushed it up a stop. He took several shots with the autowinder, but the noise seemed to carry in the still air, so he disconnected it.

******

This was everything Kevin McMahon could have hoped for. The light was coming up quickly, and from his vantage point Paul could see faces, license plates on the trucks, and every movement from the backing in of the trucks to the dropping of the hoses in the water to the turn of the valves to release the toxic wastes. The camera and telephoto lens were capturing everything.

Paul had tucked the first roll into his camera bag and was shooting his second when he heard a rustle behind him. He turned and shuddered. Two large men were looking at him with small, strange smiles. “Good morning,” the first one said.

“Good morning,” Paul said quietly. He was in very big trouble and he knew it. These men were radiating thoughts he had never experienced before, but they frightened him.

“Taking pictures of the river?” the man asked with an unsettling civility.

“Yes.” Paul stopped himself from trembling. “The cranes are very beautiful.”

“There aren’t any cranes here,” the man said. He stepped forward, nudging Paul aside to take his vantage point. The man looked towards the trucks, which were finishing up. He looked at Paul and shook his head. “You should know better than to invade someone else’s privacy.” With a firm gesture the man pulled away Paul’s camera. “Autowinders. They’re such noisy things.” The man admired the camera for a moment, then quietly popped the back open, exposing the film. Paul looked at him silently, noticing that the other man was still blocking the way back to his car. The first man removed the film from the camera and flicked it into the river, then carefully closed the camera back. He looked at the camera and sighed, then looked up at Paul. There was something in his eyes which drove a strange chill through Paul. It was something he had never felt before, but he knew it from somewhere. There was a line in Jake Lawton’s Vietnam War novel, something about looking death in the face and not blinking. Paul desperately wanted to blink.

The man held Paul’s camera out to him with both hands, but when Paul took it the man let loose a savage punch to Paul’s stomach. Paul crumbled, the camera dropping from his hands. Unable to breathe,

Paul twisted slowly on the ground as the two men stood above him. Paul rolled over to crawl to his feet, but the first man kicked him sharply in the stomach and he tumbled over hard.

Paul had to do something. He reached into his pocket for his sphere. But the man kicked him in the arm before he could pull it out, and, as Paul rolled with the blow, he kicked him in the kidney for good measure. As Paul lay sprawled on the ground, looking up at the impassive men, the body memory of Paul Forrester’s death in the helicopter crash came over him, leaving him nauseous and dizzy. He rolled over again and tried to get up, but this time he fell over on his own. Both men stepped with him, watching, as he tried to move away. He had to gather his strength. If he could just get to his feet .... He tried to say something to buy time, but he couldn’t muster enough air from his lungs. In desperation, he reached out to touch the first man’s foot, hoping he could connect with him and at least slow down the punches. But he couldn’t quite reach, and the man pulled his foot away.

Paul knew this was it, now or never. He rolled away from them slowly, then summoned up every ounce of strength and scrambled to his feet. He dashed about ten yards through the tall grass before being felled by a tackle around the knees. The second man picked Paul up like a rag doll, holding him with his arms behind his back, and the first man punched Paul in the face several times. Two more punches to the stomach loosed Paul’s breakfast. The first man stopped, then opened Paul’s jacket. He pulled out the hem of his flannel shirt and ripped out a section. With this makeshift rag, he dabbed at Paul’s face gently, wiping off the vomit and blood. Then he dropped the rag and delivered a crushing roundhouse right to Paul’s chin. Paul was hanging limply in the second man’s arms, and the first man hit Paul again so hard he was wrenched from the man’s grip. He hit the ground with a sickening thud and did not move. Both men knew something was wrong, and the first man pulled Paul up by the jacket shoulder. Paul slumped in his grasp, and both men could see the blood on the back of Paul’s head and on the rock he had hit when he fell. The man let go of Paul’s jacket, and Paul slipped to the earth, ashen and silent. The man thought for a few moments, then pointed at the abandoned camera equipment, and the second man gathered it up. The first man went through Paul’s pockets, putting the contents, including Paul’s sphere, into his jacket pockets. They lifted Paul’s body, being careful not to get his blood on their clothes, and carried him to the river bank. With a glance to see that the trucks were gone, the men dumped Paul’s body in the river. The man rinsed Paul’s blood off his hands in the river water. They picked up Paul’s camera equipment and disappeared into the dawn.

******

Kevin McMahon waited in his office for Paul to call in. His instincts told him today was the day, so Paul wouldn’t have to be out past dark. But his instincts also told him things weren’t quite right, so he was fussing around instead of getting anything done. He checked with the receptionist no less than eight times before lunch to see if Paul had called, but every time it was the same answer: “No, Mr. McMahon. As soon as he calls, I’ll connect you.“

McMahon had just about convinced himself that his instincts were wrong when he got a call at 3:30. It was his friend Bill Riley at the police department, who had been working with him on the Farmers Chemicals Cooperative case.

“Kevin, did you have a photographer out on the Missouri today?”

“Yeah.”

“What did he look like?”

McMahon’s ulcer gave him a sharp kick. “About six feet tall, dark hair.”

“Name Paul Forrester?”

“Yeah.”

Riley sighed heavily. “We got a call a little while ago from the state patrol. A farmer outside Murray witnessed what looks like a homicide, and the patrol picked up two men who fit the IDs. They had some camera equipment and Forrester’s wallet on them.” McMahon felt sick to his stomach. “They’re both Farmers Chemicals employees.” The two friends sat in silence on the phone for a moment. “I’m sorry, Kevin. It looks like you finally got your story. It just wasn’t the one you wanted.”

******

Scott got home just before dark and fixed some leftovers for dinner. His new friends were going to pick him up about six, and then they were going to the football game across town. He liked this school, and he found himself hoping they could stay for a little while. He had missed homecoming in Madison, but this school’s homecoming was in another two weeks. He’d enjoy that a lot.

He had turned off the lights to go wait out on the front step when he heard a car pull up in front. Something about its urgency made his skin crawl. He peeked out the front window and saw a squad car. With no time to think, he ran out the back door into the fenced yard. He could hear knocking on the front door as he looked around the yard in the fading twilight. There was nowhere to go. A maple tree near the garage offered the only haven. He shinnied up the tree just as two police officers came around the side of the house, looking in the windows. Wondering where his father was and how he was going to get in touch with him, Scott camouflaged himself in the branches as the officers looked around the yard.

“I wonder where he is?” the first one said.

“He could be out with friends,” the second replied. “He’s registered over at the school.” They stood for a moment and looked at the house. “Do you want to wait?”

The first shrugged. “For a few minutes. Then we can ask the neighbors to keep an eye out for him.”

“Do you think he knows what happened?” the second officer said. Scott reacted with surprise.

The first shook his head. “I don’t think it’s been on the news yet.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking about this,” the second said. “Farmers is a big outfit. What if they knew about the kid and sent someone to get him, too?” The first officer let out an invective. “Or maybe the kid found out and he’s on the run, thinking they’re after him.” The officers stood in the growing gloom as Scott’s mind raced through every horrible possibility, refusing to believe each one as it came up. The second officer ambled over to the tree and leaned against it, rattling Scott in his perch. “It’s tough, you know? The kid’s 16. I guess it was just him and his father. It’s really tough.”

“Yeah.”

Another car pulled up in the driveway, and Scott could hear the lively voices of his football game companions as they piled out of the car. The officers turned to the kids, who met them in the side yard. “What’s the matter?” Joe said. Scott watched sadly as some more new friends were vanishing from his life. He had really liked Joe. He’d reminded him of his cousin Tom in Madison.

“Do you kids know where Scott Hayden is?” the first officer asked.

“We were picking him up to go to the football game,” Joe answered. “Did something happen to him?”

“Well,” the second officer said, “it looks like his father was in an accident today, so if you see Scott, would you take care of him and give us a call? We need to make sure he’s okay.”

Billie, Joe’s girlfriend, gasped. “When I left the house, Mom said that someone had been murdered and they were dragging the river and everything.” She looked at the others solemnly. “Is it his dad?”

Scott didn’t hear the rest of the conversation below. He tried to keep his wits about him as something caught in his throat and he began to shake. The others talked quietly for a while, and then the kids left. The police officers went to the neighbors’ houses on each side, and then they too left. Scott waited for a few minutes, then climbed unsteadily down the tree. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t real. He knew it. His father would show up, it was all a mistake. His father couldn’t be ... couldn’t be ... no, he couldn’t be ... dead. No. No. No way. It had to be a mistake.

He slipped quietly into the dark house. He couldn’t turn on a light because the neighbors would see it. He turned on the kitchen radio and found a newscast beginning somewhere. First the national news. Nothing was on that. Then the local news. The top story: “A man is missing and presumed dead and two men are being held in custody at this hour ...” Scott tried to hear the rest, something about a witness, the search for the body, an investigation of Farmers Chemicals Cooperative, the man’s identity not being released pending notification of next of kin, and police continuing their investigation. It didn’t make sense, or it wasn’t sinking in, or ... or ... no. His father was not dead. He couldn’t be. No. He tricked them. He tricked them somehow. That had to be it. Yes. That had to be it. Scott turned off the radio. He sat at the kitchen table in the silent darkness. He just needed to think what to do. He rested his head on the table. He just needed to think. He didn’t notice when the oblivion of sleep overcame him.

******

Scott woke up after 2 a.m., still at the kitchen table. At first he didn’t know where he was. A dream had awakened him. He was back in that laboratory in Peagrum Air Force Base in Arizona, and scientists were performing experiments on him. Fox had just walked over and matter-of-factly mentioned that they had been doing a particular experiment on his father and he had died. Scott blinked in the darkness, trying to get his bearings. Then he saw the radio on the table next to him, and the surreality of his reality came back to him. Aside from the dream, the sleep had done him good. He knew what he had to do.

He was alone now. He couldn’t rely on his father’s calm reasoning. He had to do this himself. Scott moved through the house by the light of the street light out front. All of the neighbors’ houses were dark, but he couldn’t take the chance of turning on a light. He packed their belongings, keeping out the list of safe contacts Mary Hayden had given them. Her phone number was across the top. He put on his father’s leather jacket, both for warmth and a sense of comfort. Then, with a last look at what had been a good place to stay, he left.

Scott walked to the center of town. It was well past curfew, so he avoided all passing cars and houses with lights on. He went over his plan again. He had to assume he would find his father. He still had $42 left over from the $50, so he knew he had the money to make his plan work. It was just a matter of nerve. If he didn’t lose his cool, he knew he could probably get away with it. Besides, right now he didn’t feel as if he had much to lose.

By 7 a.m., he had found a convenience store open and bought a billfold like his father’s new one -- had it only been a week since he had bought it? it seemed like another lifetime -- along with breakfast and a newspaper. Splashed all across the front page was a photo of his father -- the real Paul Forrester, actually -- and a tale of murder, capture, one attacker turning state’s evidence on the other, and of police dragging the river in search of the body. It seemed a little more real this morning, but he pushed acceptance from his thoughts. A glance at the newspaper rack showed the story mentioned on the front page of a Chicago paper; okay, the word was out now. Fox would be on his way. Scott knew he had to move fast. There was no room for hesitation.

He found a hardware store open early on that Saturday and in the back where no one could see him he borrowed a pair of scissors from the shelf and cut up back pages from the newspaper, fitting the pieces into the billfold so it was about the same thickness of his father’s billfold. He put the billfold in his back pocket and pushed it around, trying to distress it. He replaced the scissors and then bought a ball bearing that looked like his sphere. Funny, he thought as he walked to the bus depot, people seemed not to be able to tell the sphere from a ball bearing, and yet it was so obvious to him. Maybe he was more like his father than he thought.

At the bus depot, Scott put their bags in a locker, and then he got a couple dollars’ worth of change from the cashier. He had acquired change at each of his stops, trying to avoid suspicion by getting only a few dollars’ worth at each place, and now he had about $10 in quarters and dimes. But he had another stop before he could use them.

Scott stood across the street from the main police station, looking at the entrance and trying to screw his courage to the sticking place. Everything was in place. He just had to get in there before his resolve disappeared altogether. Fox would be arriving today; he had to do it now. With a last deep breath, Scott marched into the station.

The place seemed busy to Scott for a Saturday morning, but then, after all, a somewhat famous person had just been murdered -- no, seemed to have been murdered -- and they were on the case. Wrapping himself in an air of innocent concern, he approached the desk sergeant, who was on the phone. The sergeant acknowledged him and continued with the call, which ironically had to do with the search for him. Apparently someone was reporting having seen a teenage boy matching Scott’s description near the rail yards, and the sergeant was getting all the details. Scott looked around and noticed what looked like a reporter chatting with a detective, and after shifting his listening focus he picked up that until the body was located the suspects would be charged with attempted murder. The detective went off the record and described the savage beating as related by the attacker who had turned state’s evidence, including the gruesome civility of wiping off Paul’s face with the rag from his shirt. Scott found himself getting queasy.

The desk sergeant completed his call and looked at Scott. “Can I help you?”

“... Yes, my name is ... Paul Edwards, and I go to high school with Scott Hayden, the missing kid whose father ... you’re looking for, and we wanted to help. I work on the school newspaper, and we were wondering if maybe we could help.” Scott stopped while he was ahead, thinking he sounded half-way intelligent. Maybe.

The desk sergeant smiled. “That’s very thoughtful of you, Paul, but we’re handling this okay by ourselves.”

“But, ah, we thought we could help you, ah, with finding Scott. I mean, we think he’s hiding because he’s afraid and we thought, you know, we’re all teenagers and maybe we could, like, well, what if he thinks his father’s alive and he’s looking for his father and maybe we could get some clues and, you know, know what’s he thinking and help find him.” Scott shut up, knowing he was no longer ahead.

The desk sergeant looked at him with an amused smile. “Would you like to talk with a detective?”

“... Ah, no. They’re probably pretty busy. But I read in the paper that the men you’ve arrested had all of Mr. Forrester’s stuff on them. I mean, you have all that, right? Maybe there’s something in there that Scott knows about that would be a clue that he would, like, use to find out where his father is.”

The sergeant wiped a smile off his face. “I bet you’re on the debate team, aren’t you?” Scott looked at him for a moment, then understood the remark and frowned. He knew he sounded like an idiot; rubbing it in wasn’t necessary. The sergeant chuckled in spite of himself. “Okay. Sure. You can try and sweet talk your way in. The Evidence Room is down this corridor. At the end there’s a hallway to the right, third door on the left.”

“Thank you,” Scott said sheepishly and walked back. The Evidence Room had a Dutch door with a small shelf on the closed lower half. An officer came up to meet him from inside. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, ah, my name is Paul Edwards and I’m a school friend of Scott Hayden, the kid who’s missing, and the desk sergeant said I could come back here and look at Paul Forrester’s stuff.”

“Oh, he did, did he?” the officer said pointedly. “You can’t do that. This is an investigation in progress. You can’t just come in here and ask to see evidence.”

Scott tried not to panic. “But I think we can help.”

The officer crossed his hands firmly on the door’s shelf. “No. I’m sorry.”

Planning gave way to emotion. Scott put a desperate hand on the officer’s arm. “Please.”

The officer looked at Scott for a long moment, and Scott could feel something strange happening. The officer’s face softened, and he shook his head slightly. “Well, I, uh, guess it wouldn’t really hurt.” The officer turned away slowly, and Scott stared at his hand. The officer searched for a moment, then turned back with a small box. He opened the lid to reveal the contents. Scott tried to keep his heart from leaping out of his throat. There was his father’s sphere, billfold, house and car keys, some loose change and an unused roll of film, along with some other items which must have belonged to his father’s attacker. “The camera bag’s back here,” the officer said. “Talk about dumb luck. The guys killed him so he wouldn’t get the photos, but they didn’t even check the bag. There was an exposed roll of film in there. He got the whole thing on film. He nailed them. Farmers is busted. He just didn’t live to see it.”

Scott calmed himself as he looked at his father’s belongings. There was that beautiful key chain he had given his father for Christmas at Stella Forrester’s house in Ironwood. He would have to abandon that now. He’d lost the small telescope his father had given him when Fox had raided the Haydens’ house in Madison. Now this would go, too. But there was nothing to be done about it. And it was a small price to pay for freedom.

He glanced both ways down the hall to make sure no one could see him. He leaned in over the box, his hand pushing down on the box’s near side. Suddenly the box flipped over onto the floor at Scott’s feet. He reacted with as much surprise as the officer and quickly bent down to put everything back in the box. But before the officer could open the lower half of the door, out of Scott’s pocket came the ball bearing and substitute wallet and into the pocket went the genuine articles.

The officer popped the door open and scooped the box away from Scott, who looked very embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. I ...”

“Just go on and go home, okay? Let us handle this.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’m sorry.”

The officer checked the box’s contents agitatedly as Scott walked down the hall, past the desk sergeant, past the reporter and detective, and out the front door. He couldn’t quite believe it, but he’d done it. He had his father’s IDs, and, what was more important, he had his father’s sphere. Naughton Wells would have been proud.

******

At the bus depot, Scott got the bags out of the locker and sat in an old wooden phone booth. He stacked the change in front of him, and then pulled out the piece of paper with Mary’s phone number on it. After a deep breath, he called the operator, asked to be connected with the number, and put in the requisite amount of money. The phone rang five times, and Scott was getting edgy. Then the line clicked. “Hello?” It was Mary.

Hearing her voice, he suddenly felt very pathetic and alone. “Hi, it’s Scott.”

“Scott?” There was a peculiar edge to her voice. “Oh, yes, Scott Keitzer!” Her voice sparkled with a pointed cheeriness. “How nice to hear from you. I’d love to chat, but I’ve got a friend on the line, so I have to go. Be sure to say hello to your folks and Stephan for me. And please thank them for the orange blossoms. Thanks so much for calling.” The line went dead.

What the heck was that? Scott sat staring at the phone, the dial tone buzzing loudly in his ear. He replaced the receiver and tried to regroup his thoughts. Okay, this woman was sharp. She was telling him things. She had a friend on the line? He knew they didn’t have Call Waiting. He gulped. Her line must be tapped. Scott fought off a forbidding sense of isolation with the one person he could count on now cut off from him. Never mind. He could handle this. What was that name she said? He looked at the list of contacts she had given them. There, Kurt and Irmtraud Keitzer. Rockland, Wisconsin. It seemed a million miles away. What was that stuff about orange blossoms and somebody named Stephan? They probably would know.

Scott sat in the phone booth for a long time. He hadn’t really thought about what to do once he’d gotten this far. The men who had attacked his father hadn’t even bothered to take the money out of the billfold. He had almost $300 to live off now. He wanted to stay and look for his father. But Fox would be arriving today, and besides, everybody in Omaha was looking for him. For all he knew, Scott Hayden “wanted posters” were going up all over town. How could he hope to find his father and get away with everybody from local farmers to the FSA looking for him? Mary must have heard the news about his father. She was telling him to get out of there and stay in a safe place. He didn’t want to leave. But what could he do? What would his father want him to do? 

He turned his back to the phone booth door and took out his father’s sphere. He connected with it, hoping for something. It glowed and hummed soothingly, but there was no message. He disconnected and put the sphere away. There was a bus leaving in ten minutes for Des Moines. There he could get connections to Wisconsin. What did his father want him to do? Echoing out of the mists of some half- remembered street escape he heard his father shout, “Run, Scott!” After another long moment to realize he had no other choice, he gathered up the bags and bought a bus ticket for Des Moines.

******

George Fox paced agitatedly in the police chief’s office. The chief was on the phone, checking in with a field supervisor. The moment he hung up the phone, Fox pounced.

“But what are you doing to find him?” Fox shouted.

Like so many before him, the police chief was developing a strong dislike for this man. “Mr. Fox, the Missouri River isn’t the Washington Tidal Basin. The currents can be very swift, and there’s a lot of undergrowth. The body could be snagged under the surface 20 yards from the attack site or it could be 50 miles downstream. There are hundreds of small islands and sand bars to search. We’ve got crews on both sides of the river, and we’ve contacted the authorities in Kansas and Missouri.”

“But you’re forgetting something,” Fox said pointedly. “He might be alive.”

Keeping his temper, the chief replied evenly, “We have police and state patrol personnel in six states on the lookout for him.”

Fox didn’t care much for this man, either. “And what about the boy?”

“Mr. Fox, I know my job. I’m doing everything I can. If you want more than that, I suggest you provide your own people.”

The chief had hit a nerve, and Fox began to fume. “It’s not my fault some congressman decided to stick his nose into my budget and cut my manpower.”

The chief looked at Fox with cool disdain. He didn’t care about Fox’s problems. He had problems of his own to deal with. Fox decided to do battle elsewhere and went with the detective in charge of the case down to the Evidence Room. At least he could confiscate Forrester’s possessions. The woman who was now operating the room brought out the box and camera bag. The detective told Fox the story about the exposed roll of film which undid the felons, but Fox wasn’t impressed. After giving the bag a perfunctory once-over, he opened the box and smiled at the sight of the sphere. He picked it up and clutched it triumphantly, to the raised eyebrows of the police officers, but his smile faded as he held the sphere. There was something wrong. It seemed heavy. When he had held it before, in Arizona, it was lighter somehow. Well, maybe he was wrong. He put the sphere down and sorted through the other items, idly picking up the wallet. He opened it and discovered newspaper where the money should have been.

“What is this? A joke?”

The woman looked at her papers. “Man’s bifold wallet, containing $252, an Illinois driver’s license in the name of Paul Edward Forrester, ...”

Fox flipped through the cardholder section, but it was empty. He took out the newspaper. It was today’s edition. “What’s going on here? Who’s been in this box?”

The chagrined detective glared at the woman. “What’s going on, Jan?”

“I don’t know. Barney was in here this morning.” She paused. “Wait. He was kind of bent out of shape about something.”

“What?” Fox shot back.

“He was mad at Verne -- he’s the front desk sergeant, sir -- about some kid being allowed to come back here.”

“Kid?” Fox’s blood pressure rose even higher.

“He said he worked on the school newspaper where Forrester’s son went to school and said they were trying to help find him or something.”

The detective was becoming flustered. “What happened when the kid was here?”

“Barney said he knocked the box on the floor, so he kicked him out.”

Fox didn’t want to hear anymore. He fumed for a moment, then gathered himself. “Well, you people have done more than enough. At least now I know if Scott would pull a trick like this, he knows Forrester’s alive and he knows where he is. They’re probably already together and long gone.”

******

It was just past dawn when the bus driver woke Scott and told him they were in Rockland. Scott looked out the window sleepily. It didn’t look like much. Just another farm community, but he could see a somewhat impressive old building which said, “Rockland County Courthouse.” He gathered up the bags and headed out into the cold morning air. The countryside looked vaguely familiar. Hadn’t they come through here on their way to Madison? It was impossible that it had been less than four weeks ago. He paused at a closed gas station, looking at the map taped in the window. Madison seemed to be not more than 50 miles away. He didn’t like being so close. Could somebody possibly recognize him? He had to trust that Mary knew what she was doing when she sent him here.

He was hungry, but he still had some of the chips he’d bought in Des Moines. It was probably better to find the Keitzers as soon as possible. The list of safe contacts included directions, so he started walking north out of town, looking for County Highway H.

Being an experienced walker came in handy, because it turned out the directions led him nearly nine miles down winding county roads and wooded back lanes. He was trudging up a gravel road through a hollow when he reached the crest. A picture-perfect farmhouse, barn and small buildings came into view. Thank goodness, he thought. It was Sunday morning. Was anyone here? Wisps of smoke were coming out of the chimney. Maybe they were having breakfast. Pancakes and bacon and eggs and toast and ... He picked up his pace a bit.

He walked to the front door and knocked. He heard a woman’s voice, then footfalls. The door opened, and a kind-looking woman in her 70s appeared before him. “Yes? May I help you?” She had a heavy German accent.

“Hi, uh, my name is Scott. Mary Hayden sent me.”

Her face lit up with recognition. “Oh, Mary Hayden!” She called over her shoulder, “Kurt! Come. We have a guest. Mary sent him.” She looked at Scott, obviously delighted. “How did you get here? You have no car? You walked? My goodness, from where did you walk?” She reached out to take one of his bags, but he wasn’t comfortable with this yet.

“Mary said I was supposed to say hello to Stephan for her.”

A man in his 70s had appeared behind the woman as Scott was speaking, and the couple exchanged a mildly puzzled glance.

“And she said thanks for the orange blossoms.”

The couple’s faces fell open with shock, and after a stunned moment the woman pulled the startled Scott into the house and closed the door quickly. They both looked at him intently. “Are you sure she said ‘orange blossoms?’“ the man said.

“Yes.”

The woman turned and closed the blind over the door’s window, and the couple took Scott quickly into the living room, where they sat him down between them on the couch. “Who are you, Scott?” the man asked. “Why did Mary send you to us?”

Scott wasn’t sure how much to tell them. He would have to feel his way along. “I’m her grandson.”

They looked at each other with concern. The woman shook her head. “But you are not Tom Kuehn.”

“No, I’m not. I’m Jenny’s son, Scott. Scott Hayden.”

The woman regarded him, then looked at the man and said something to him in German. He replied in German, nodding. Then her face lit up. “Yes. That’s right. She had a child.” She smiled at him with delight. “But Scott, why would Mary send you to us with ‘orange blossoms?’”

“Look, I don’t know. It’s just what she said. I don’t know what it means.”

The man had a twinkle in his eye as he glanced at his wife, then back to Scott. “Scott, did she tell you about us?”

“No. She couldn’t talk. ... Her line was tapped.”

The man and woman looked at each other significantly, but Scott was surprised to see small smiles on their faces. The woman nodded to her husband. “Well, Kurt, it seems Mary is now living in our old house.” She patted Scott’s hand jovially. “Scott, we are very pleased to have you in our home. You may stay for as long as you want. Have you had lunch?”

“I haven’t had breakfast,” he said with betrayed eagerness.

“Good heavens! We must feed you!” They escorted him into the dining room.

Over potato pancakes, sausage, scrambled eggs and several strange-looking things that tasted wonderful, Scott heard Kurt tell their story. Kurt and Irmtraud had been a young farm couple who lived secret lives as part of Mary’s German underground network when she was in the OSS during World War II. He listened with amazement as they told stories of helping downed Allied fliers by giving them a place to stay on the route, via Mary’s network, to Switzerland. They had been recruited by her, then Mary Gephardt, just before the war, before she was even officially in the Army. Her code name: Orange Blossoms. They worked for her faithfully to the bitter end of the war. To their surprise, she arrived at their farm immediately after the American Army arrived in May 1945. She told them their area was going to become part of the Soviet sector, now called East Germany, and Mary was afraid they would be in jeopardy if their connection with the Americans was discovered. She got them visas and brought them to the United States, and even helped them secure a loan to buy this farm. They owed their lives to Mary, and they would do anything for her.

Scott sat in amazement as they talked of their lives during the war. It was strange enough looking at this kindly old couple and thinking of them as being young newlyweds, let alone that they did something so heroic and dangerous.

“Can you imagine, Scott,” Irmtraud said, “what it was like to be afraid for your life every day, year after year?” Scott nodded. Yes, he could imagine. “But it was something we had to do. I was more reluctant that Kurt. I was very afraid. You cannot know what it was like then. Neighbors spied on their friends. You could not know who to trust. And if you were different, in what way it did not matter, you could be taken away and never seen again. It was a very terrible time. It was as if you were living in a nightmare from which you could not wake up.” Scott nodded again. He knew that one, too.

But who was Stephan, Scott wanted to know. Kurt explained that Stephan Hochmüller was the son of German underground members who had been captured and executed by the Gestapo. Stephan had been spirited away by other members of Mary’s network, and he had lived with the Keitzers for two years, as a fictitious cousin’s child, until the end of the war. Cousins of Stephan’s mother took him then, and he now lived in Munich. He was still close to the Keitzers, even bringing his family to visit several years back.

When it came time for the polite questions about why Mary wanted Scott to stay with them, he fudged his answers a bit. He explained Paul as being a man his mother had met after her husband had died and he was “really more my father” than Scott Hayden was. He talked about Paul’s disappearance, but explained not being able to go to the police because some of them “are sort of the bad guys, too” and they were looking for him as if he were a criminal.

They listened thoughtfully, then Kurt nodded. “We will take the best care of you we can, but we have a problem. Mary must have great faith in us, because she knows about this problem. In addition to Stephan, there was another young man who lived with us here for awhile while he was growing up. His name is Evan Pierce. We see him often, and it will be impossible for us to keep him away while you are here.”

“That’s okay. I can handle that.”

“But the problem is,” Irmtraud said seriously, “Evan is the Rockland County Sheriff.”

Scott swallowed hard. What had Mary gotten him into?

******

The couple spent the rest of the day constructing a new identity for Scott. After much wrangling, a significant portion of which took place in German, the couple concluded that the best story would stay as close to the truth as possible. If anyone asked, they would be told Scott was the son of Stephan Hochmüller. However, because Scott obviously couldn’t speak German -- he couldn’t even say Hochmüller very well -- and was not a part of the Hochmüller family’s visit, an elaborate tale was spun. Scott’s mother was a young American foreign exchange student from Seattle who met Stephan while in Germany. He was separated from his wife at the time and the two fell in love, and Stephan asked her to marry him when his divorce came through. When her horrified parents found out, they brought her home. But it was too late -- she was already pregnant. She married someone else before Scott was born and this man was Scott’s legal father. This was why Scott’s name was not Hochmüller, but Hunter, although Stephan readily acknowledged Scott as his son. So, as Scott’s parents were having marriage difficulties right now, he was away from home and living with the Keitzers. The story was just strange enough to be real, everyone concluded. Scott chuckled to himself -- it certainly made more sense than the “real” story.

“We can all live with this story, I think,” Kurt concluded. “The hardest part will be lying to Evan. He is in many ways our son. But we will do it, because, Scott Hayden, we do not know who you are. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“You came to us and said you were Stephan Hochmüller’s son. We had no reason to doubt you. So we took you in. If you are found out, we will no longer be able to help you. You will be on your own.”

Scott agreed. By this point, the last 48 hours were taking their toll, and he was very tired. So, after a light dinner, Irmtraud took him up to the spare bedroom and bid him good night. Tomorrow, she said brightly as if this were some sort of treat, they would take him to town and enroll him in the high school. Not again, he grumbled to himself as she closed the door.

He sat in the room thinking for a long time. He didn’t like hiding some of the truth from these people, considering he was making them lie to their friends about him. It didn’t make any difference that they had done this before, off in some history book somewhere. He didn’t like it at all. He curled up under the covers. He thought of something, then pulled his sphere from his jeans pocket. It had worked once before. And he wasn’t even trying then. Could it work again? He connected with his sphere. Dad, I’m in trouble. Come and find me. Let me know you’re alive. Please.

Nothing happened. He was absolutely alone. 

******

The rocking of the empty cattle truck and the rush of the night wind through the vents provided a strange highway lullaby, but Paul had other things on his mind. He didn’t know where he was, and he had no idea how he had gotten there. He did not remember the events of the last two days, drifting across the river to the Iowa side, snagging on some tree branches in the water and being held there until he came to, climbing up onto the bank and stumbling towards the interstate, crawling under the highway in a drainage tunnel, finding this truck at a rest stop, crawling in. He also did not remember the attack, and neither did he remember the photo assignment. In fact, up until a little while ago he had not even remembered who he was and where he was from. But he did now, and that was reassuring. He could see the stars through the vents, and he knew he was traveling west, although he wasn’t sure how he knew that. He kept reaching into his pocket, and he kept not finding his sphere. This was all very strange. There was something about this, something familiar. Traveling, night, the wind, the land rolling by ... Oh, yes. He remembered that now, too. But there was something missing. Someone. The Planet Earth woman. Jenny Hayden. He looked around. Where was she? This was not ... what was the word? Right, that was it. How did he know so many words? He rubbed his face, but it hurt and he stopped. Was his face supposed to hurt? He didn’t remember if it was, but then he didn’t remember much of anything. Where was Jenny Hayden? Well, he couldn’t find her now. He was very tired. The gentle rocking of the truck beckoned him towards sleep. He curled up in the hay and slept.

The next morning he was discovered by the drivers as they stopped at a truck stop and they booted him out. They reacted with alarm when they saw him, and he couldn’t understand this. But then, he hadn’t seen his face. The river had washed away the blood, but his face was still battered and swollen, his hair was matted with mud from somewhere, and he looked ghastly. He would have frightened himself if he had looked in a mirror.

He wandered around the parking lot of the truck stop for a while. The countryside was very beautiful, with mountains and trees. It didn’t seem right, but it was still very beautiful. Well, he knew somehow that traveling with him was hazardous for Jenny Hayden’s health, so it was better that she was on her own. She would be all right. She belonged here, and she could find her own way well enough. He had to get out of here.

A couple with a camper on a pickup truck was washing the windows when he came upon them. “Please.” They reacted with fear, but did not pull away.

“Can I help you, brother?” the man said.

“I am not your brother,” Paul said, wondering how someone could make such a mistake. “But please, I have to go home. I have to get to the crater.”

The woman looked at the man for an opinion, and he looked at her for a decision. They both nodded slightly. “My friend, the Lord teaches us to help those in need. We’ll take you there. Climb in back.”

Paul gratefully climbed in back and stretched out on the camper floor between the sleeping bags and bags of food. The couple got in the truck’s cab and the woman slid open the back window. “Help yourself to food if you’re hungry.”

Oh, yes, now he remembered. That great emptiness in his body was hunger. He ate about 10 slices of bread, and then remembered that the contents of the jar of brown organic matter of protein and fat also in the bag tasted pretty good on bread. He found a knife and spread the peanut butter on. It tasted very good, and he made another.

The man told him the trip would take about three hours, and indeed just about three hours later the couple stopped the camper in a small town. The woman helped Paul get out of the back as the man went into a small building. Paul looked around, thinking this place wasn’t right. He didn’t know what right was, but he knew this wasn’t it. It was very green, and there were many trees. The man came out of the building with another man, who was dressed all in brown. Even though this new man spoke gently, there was something about him which frightened Paul.

“These folks say you need some help,” the park ranger said. He nodded to the couple, and they patted Paul reassuringly on the shoulder before driving away.

“Yes, I have to get to the crater.”

The ranger smiled at him, and Paul liked that. “What are you going to do there?”

“I have to go home.”

The ranger reacted thoughtfully. “You live in the lake?”

“No. You see, the ship is coming to pick me up.”

“Oh. The ship. When is it coming?”

“When the sun is overhead, on the third day.”

“When is the third day?”

Paul frowned. “I don’t know.”

“Well,” the park ranger said, “it’s well past noon and I haven’t seen any ships in the area, so it must not be today. Would you like to come in the office for a little while and sit down?”

Paul thought this over. The man seemed nice enough, but there was something here Paul wanted to get away from.

The ranger smiled again. “Come on, I’ll help you out.”

The park ranger gently guided Paul into the small building. Paul sat in a chair next to his desk as the man placed a telephone call. “Hi, this is Kyle Jackson from the Crater Lake Ranger Station. I have someone here who I think needs your help. ... Yeah, he’s looking for a ship to pick him up in the lake and beam him home. ... Do you want to send someone? ... Fine. We’ll be here.” He hung up the phone and turned to Paul. “Do you have a name?”

“Yes. But there are no words in a Planet Earth language to say it.”

“Okay. Is there a Planet Earth name you would like to use?”

Paul thought about this for a moment. “You can call me Scott Hayden because this is his body.”

The officer dutifully wrote down the name. “How do you spell Hayden?”

Paul frowned. “Define spell.”

The officer decided on “Heyden.” “Well, Mr. Heyden, there will be some people coming here. They work for the state. They’re not from your ship, but I know they can help you more than I can.”

Paul nodded. This man seemed nice. Paul liked him.

******

The people from the state came, and they took care of Paul. They drove him to a building in a larger town, where a nice woman who seemed important asked him a number of questions. He answered as best he could, although some of the questions did not make sense. She also did something to the back of his head she called “dressing a wound.” She said it would make him feel better but it hurt a lot. The woman, who said her name was Dr. Cosgrove, told him he had severe trauma to the back of his head, which resulted in amnesia. When Paul asked what that meant and she answered, Paul replied that he knew who he was, that there were only a few things he didn’t remember. Like how to get home.

Dr. Cosgrove asked Paul if he would be interested in voluntarily having his fingerprints taken so they could identify him. He didn’t see how this applied to him, but she seemed to want him to do this so he agreed. Some men escorted him and Dr. Cosgrove to another building. At a desk, a man began rolling Paul’s fingertips in a slimy black substance and then carefully pressing his fingertips onto a piece of paper. Paul watched this with interest. It seemed familiar somehow, although he knew for certain it hadn’t happened to him since he had met Jenny Hayden. Whatever these strange markings on the paper were, he knew they would get him into trouble. So, when the man was finished and reached to hand Paul a cloth to wipe his hands, Paul looked at the little lines and changed them around.

Dr. Cosgrove explained to Paul that he would be going to stay in a nice house with some nice people where he would be safe and maybe with their help he would be okay later. She explained to the people who were escorting Paul that he was a John Doe with trauma-induced amnesia who didn’t seem to be violent, so rather than commit him to the overcrowded state hospital she wanted him in a local controlled-access shelter house.

So Paul went with these new people, who also seemed rather pleasant, and they went to the shelter house. It was dark outside again so he couldn’t see the house well, but he knew there was one thing he didn’t like about his new home. There were bars on the doors and windows. But these new people were bigger than Paul was, so he went inside anyway.

******

Paul was shown into a small office in the house the next day before breakfast. The attendants had helped him take a shower -- he didn’t seem to understand how to make the water come out of the wall -- and had given him clean clothes, but he still had about four days’ worth of beard. A harried young woman was writing on a form but stopped when he came in. “Hi. My name is Samantha Eppler. I’m the clinical assistant here. I’ll be talking with you from time to time to try and help you remember who you are.”

“But I remember who I am,” Paul said.

She cast a knowing eye on him. “Okay, yeah. I just want to go over a few things. You said your name is Scott Heyden.”

“No.”

“No?” She looked at some other pieces of paper. “You told the ranger your name was Scott Heyden.”

“No. I told him he could call me that because this is Scott Hayden’s body.”

“Oh.” She thought for a moment, absently twisting a large, heavy silver chain which hung around her neck like a shackle. “Well, this form doesn’t really have a spot for that. Can I just say your name is Scott Heyden?”

He shrugged. How did he know what shrugging meant?

“Thank you.” She scribbled something on the form. “Okay, so you were up at the park, saying you needed to get into the crater so you could go home.”

“Yes.”

“A ship was going to come and pick you up?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of ship?”

He pointed up. “Large, and round. Very beautiful.”

She looked at him. “Where was this ship from?”

“Home.”

“Where is home?”

He smiled. “Not here.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that.” She scratched some more on the form. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

He looked at her with concern. “You asking me that question.”

“No,” she said, a little flustered. “What’s the first thing you remember?”

“The very first thing?”

She frowned, trying to this figure out. “You remember this morning?”

“Yes.”

“You remember coming here last night?”

“Yes.”

“You remember the park ranger?”

“Yes.”

“You remember how you got to Crater Lake?”

“Crater Lake. Yes, I remember.”

“Do you remember before that?”

He thought for a moment. “I remember being on something Jenny Hayden called a train.”

“Who’s Jenny Heyden?”

He smiled. “She’s a woman.”

Samantha wrote on the form. “Yeah, I kinda figured that. Where is she now?”

“I don’t know.”

“When did you last see her?”

He thought. “I don’t know. We were on a train, and then I woke up and I wasn’t on the train but it was like the train, and she was gone.”

“What were you doing on the train?” He smiled broadly at her, and she shook her head. “Never mind. Do you think Jenny took your valuables?”

“Define valuables.”

She looked at him seriously, and blew out a pent-up breath. “Okay, well, look, Scott, this is going to take longer than I thought. You go have breakfast, and we’ll talk later, okay?”

“But if the ship does not pick me up by the middle of the third day, I’ll die.”

“Well, we’ll just have to risk that, won’t we?” she said, going over the form. Paul didn’t know what “risk” meant, but he didn’t like the sound of it. She pointed towards the door. “You can go eat.” He got up and left. She puzzled over the form, and the phone rang. She picked it up and began twisting the neck chain again. “Hello?”

“Hi, Samantha, it’s Dr. Cosgrove. How’s our John Doe this morning?”

“He’s sticking to his story that he’s from another planet, but he said something about traveling on a train with a woman. She may have picked him up, and then cracked his skull to get his wallet.”

“Okay. I still think his cognitive dysfunction is trauma-induced, so I’d like you to spend a little extra time with him. The more he talks, the more he may remember. Take lots of notes, and save anything new that comes up. I’ll see him on my regular visits.”

Samantha hung up and went out to the dining room, where everyone had gathered for breakfast. All 19 residents were sitting at the long tables, waiting for the food to be brought to them. She noticed Paul examining the scene with a puzzled look on his face. She went over to him. “What’s the matter, Scott?”

“What is this place?”

“It’s called a shelter house.”

“Define shelter house.”

“Well, the people who live here are either mentally handicapped, or some are recovering from mental illness. They don’t need to be in a hospital, but they can’t live on their own like other people. So they can live here and have some freedom and be happy.” Paul looked at the others for a long moment as the cook began bringing out the food, to the glee of the residents. Samantha looked at him. “Do you understand?”

Paul was still looking at the others as they began to eat. “Is shelter the same thing as prison?”

“No. Shelter is good, prison is bad. Shelter is a place to stay, and prison is a place where the state puts people away.”

He shook his head. “All of the people here are put away. Shouldn’t it be called prison?”

She recoiled with surprise. “Well, it’s better than the hospital,” she said defensively.

He looked at her with a long, unblinking gaze. “But if shelter is good, this is not shelter.”

Troubled by this, Samantha stepped back as Paul’s breakfast was set before him. She watched him in quiet thought as he began to eat.

The phone rang, and one of the attendants called for Samantha. She went to her office and picked up the extension, idly beginning to work on Paul’s form again.

“Hello, my name is Ben Wylie, I work for the Federal Security Agency in Washington. I understand you have in your facility a patient named Scott Hayden.”

“Well, he’s using that name.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s suffering from severe memory loss and cognitive dysfunction.”

“May I ask you a few questions about him?”

“Go ahead.”

“Is he in his teens?”

“No. He’s much older.”

“Oh.” There was a pause. “He wouldn’t pass for a teenager?”

“Hardly. He’s about 50 going on three.”

“Oh. Do you know where he came from?”

“Some people picked him up near Portland.”

“Was he with someone when you found him?”

“No. He was alone.”

“Oh. Did he try to escape?”

“No, he’s been very quiet.”

“Has he exhibited any sort of strange behavior, like ... melting things?”

She blinked and stopped her writing. She looked out at Paul, who was quietly eating oatmeal. “Well, no, not yet. Sorry, Mr., ... Wylie, wasn’t it? I’ve got a lot of work to do, so is there anything else?”

“Well,” Wylie apologized, “can I give you my number in case you run into anyone ... strange?”

“Mr. Wylie,” she said curtly, “where do you think I work? Everybody here is strange.”

Wylie apologized again, and she hung up, shaking her head.

******

Paul’s first day started out to be uneventful. He was quickly befriended by an energetic and fidgety little man named Mr. Sweeney. Mr. Sweeney had lived in the shelter house for seven years, ever since it opened, and he said he liked the place very much, it was almost as good as home. “You see,” he said, “I don’t think so good and my sister can’t take care of me anymore. So I live here now. They give us things to do, and we get real good food.”

When Mr. Sweeney asked Paul where he was from and Paul told him, Mr. Sweeney didn’t seem bothered by it. He fidgeted as he looked at the attendants supervising free time in the common room. “I used to have an invisible friend, but when I told them about him, they said he didn’t exist so I didn’t tell them about him anymore. Do you believe in invisible people?”

“I don’t know,” Paul said thoughtfully. “I’ve never seen one.”

Mr. Sweeney laughed and laughed at that, and Paul laughed a bit, too, not quite sure what the joke was.

“Well, Scott, can you do anything?”

“Like what?”

“Like fly or something.”

“In my space craft.”

“Wow. Can you make things disappear? Can you, like, take the bars off the windows?”

Paul sighed. “I wish I could, but I can’t. I don’t have a sphere.”

“What’s that?” Mr. Sweeney said, fidgeting a little closer with curiosity.

“They help me do things. I had some left, but I don’t know where they are.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Mr. Sweeney said, downhearted. “I’d like to take the bars off the windows. They treat us like we’re scary or something. But they don’t like to treat us like we’re people. They say they put us in this house because we’re better, but they don’t treat us like we’re better. I don’t like that.” Paul agreed that it was unfair.

Mr. Sweeney became Paul’s friend, teaching him checkers, and the names of the residents and attendants, and which ones were nice and which ones were mean, and how to get extra helpings at dinner.

******

Paul watched the clock pass noon, and he was surprised that he still felt fine. How long had he been here? It must have been three days by now. This wasn’t making sense. A lot of things weren’t making sense. Well, if he was going to die, he concluded he no longer had much choice in the matter and the others would know to keep a safe distance from this place.

The rest of the day was quiet until one of the attendants gave Paul a shave in the evening. The job completed, the man patted Paul on the back and sent him to look in the mirror: “There, good as new.” Paul saw his reflection, and he was horrified. When he wouldn’t stop staring at his face in the mirror, it took two attendants to convince him to come with them into the therapy office. Samantha, who lived in the apartment in back of the house, was unhappy about being called back in after hours and kept the attendants in the room as she sat down to talk with Paul.

“What is it?” she said flatly.

“I looked in the mirror,” he said in bewilderment.

“Yes?”

“I saw my face.”

“Yes?”

“It’s the wrong one.”

“The wrong one?”

“Yes. This isn’t Scott Hayden’s body.”

“Whose body is it?”

“I don’t know.” He looked at her sadly. “I don’t remember.”

She looked at him tiredly. She wanted to go to bed. She didn’t want to deal with this right now. As she cogitated, she hung onto the silver neck chain as some men will hang onto a suspender.

“Okay, hold on a minute.” She picked up the phone and dialed. “Dr. Cosgrove, it’s me. Our John Doe is having an anxiety attack. Can I give him something?” She nodded. “Okay. Thanks.” She hung up the phone, then swung around to the locked cabinet behind her desk. She opened the case, pulled out a bottle and popped out two white tablets. She looked at one of the attendants, who nodded and poured out a glass of water, holding it next to Paul. She looked at Paul and held out the pills to him. “Here, Scott, I want you to take these.”

“Take these where?”

She frowned. She really was not in the mood for this. “I want you to put these on the back of your tongue, and I want you to drink that glass of water so these go down your throat. Got it?”

He nodded and dutifully did as she said.

“Good. They’re going to make you feel a lot better. Now, Mike and Pete are going to take you back to your room and you’re going to get some sleep.” She looked at the two attendants, and they helped Paul to his feet. “Good night,” she said as they escorted him out of the room.

Paul did get some sleep, but the white tablets did not make him feel better. In fact, he had nightmares all night. He did not remember what dreams were, so he experienced all of the images as if they were real. At first he was trapped in glass, and there were many people walking around and looking at him. Then he was running into a large crater with Jenny Hayden, but then it filled up with water and she was carried away out of sight. Then there was a face he kept seeing. It was not the body he was supposed to be in or the one he was now in, but a different one. This face looked familiar, and the person was very sad. He was holding a sphere in his hand. A sphere! If only he had a sphere! He reached out to take the object, but the image faded at his touch. He cried out in anguish.

Groggy and sullen, Paul was escorted into the therapy room before breakfast. Samantha looked him over as he sat down.

“Well, that shave took about ten years off you. How do you feel?”

“I feel terrible. So many things happened inside my head last night while I was asleep.”

She regarded him sympathetically. “Do you know anything new about who this body belongs to?”

“No,” he said, “but I know this body doesn’t like those white things you gave me.”

She smiled lightly. “Yes, but they help.” She held out one to him. “Only one this morning.” He took it in his hand. “And don’t try palming it. I’m on to that game.” He looked at her, not understanding the reference, then looked at the pill for a long moment as she offered him a glass of water. “No word on your prints yet. Rumor has it the technician said they were the strangest ones he’d ever seen.” She glanced at his fingertips as he continued to look at the pill in his hand. “They look pretty normal to me. Maybe the technician should move in here.” She looked at Paul, who was still looking at the pill. “Well?” she said politely.

“I’m not done yet.” After another moment, he put the now-neutralized pill in his mouth and swallowed it with some water.

“Good. That will help you deal with your emotions until you get a little further along. We’re here to help you, Scott. Do you know that?”

“I know you think you are helping,” Paul said. “But you really don’t know how.”

She looked at him with surprise as he rose and went off to breakfast.

******

Scott settled into his new routine with the Keitzers. Kurt given up his dairy herd several years ago, and he had arranged for his clover and alfalfa fields to be planted and harvested by a neighbor. All he had left were some chickens and one cow, so he did the chores pretty much by himself. Scott learned the pleasures of going out at 6 a.m. to wait for the school bus, and he began yet another course of schoolwork at yet another school. The school was okay. It was just kind of, well, rural. The kids talked about farming a lot. Most of them seemed to come from large families, and 4-H seemed to be a big thing. 4- H? Give me a break, he thought. There’s no way I’m going to get into raising a cow for the state fair. Some of the girls in his class were on the okay side, but most of them already had boyfriends. He wasn’t going to enjoy this. He was a fish out of water. At least his new life story helped explain some of that. But Scott still wanted out of here as quickly as possible. He had to figure out a way to find his father.

The real test of Scott’s ability to stay in this place of refuge came that Friday night. Sheriff Evan Pierce was coming over for dinner.

After hearing about Evan from Irmtraud all week, Scott had quite a picture in his mind of a man who was part Superman, part Charlie Chan, and part Heathcliff from _Wuthering Heights_ , which they were reading in English class. When Scott finally met him, he was almost surprised to find he was a normal-looking human being. About 40, kind of tall, dark hair, with dark, penetrating eyes. No great shakes. Well, maybe he could see the brooding thing Irmtraud had mentioned. And he certainly did have that sarcastic sense of humor she’d warned him about. But that didn’t matter. All that he cared about was that he had to be careful and couldn’t make a single mistake

Evan sat down at the dinner table after helping Irmtraud bring in the food. He was still in uniform, although he had parked his gun at the door. “So, Scott, I hear you’re from Seattle.”

“Yeah.”

“I like the Northwest,” he said, dishing out some mashed potatoes. “We went up there when I was a kid. I like the green, and the mountains. And I like the idea that it doesn’t get to 30 below there.”

Scott scoffed. “Thirty below? It doesn’t get to be 30 below anywhere.”

“It does here.”

“You’re kidding.” Scott didn’t like the sound of this.

“I’m not.” Evan looked at Kurt. “What was the coldest it ever got in the county? Forty below? Forty-one below? Something like that.”

Scott shook his head as he put some fried chicken on his plate. “No way.”

Evan smiled. “You’ll find out.”

Scott _knew_ he had to be long gone by then.

“So, what are you doing here?” Evan asked.

Scott looked at Evan as he was attending to the gravy on his mashed potatoes. The question seemed innocent enough. “Well, my mom told me about how they took care of my dad -- my real dad -- and it just seemed to be a good place to stay for awhile.”

“Did you fly out?”

“Bus.”

“It’s a long trip to make during a school week. You did get permission to leave school in Seattle, didn’t you?”

Scott stiffened up and looked at Irmtraud. She placed a loving but firm hand on Evan’s arm. “Excuse me, “Herr Übersheriff”, but would you please not cross-examine the witness at the dinner table?”

Evan relented with a chuckle, and Scott unkinked a notch. “Sorry,” Evan said. “Habit.”

“So,” Scott said as casually as he could, “how long have you been sheriff?”

He looked at Irmtraud, trying to remember. “Five years. I was a deputy nine years before that. Wow. Has it been that long? It’s time I grew up and got a real job.”

“Don’t you listen to him, Scott,” Irmtraud said proudly. “He is very good.”

“Third lowest crime rate in the state,” he said with sardonic pride. “We haven’t had a murder in the county for 80 years.” He thought better of the last part and frowned. “Forget I said that.”

“And he solved that one, too,” she said with a delighted laugh. “That was his ghost.”

“Ghost!?” Scott exclaimed.

Evan glowered and pointed a threatening finger at her. “Irmi -- button.” She giggled.

“You saw a ghost?” Scott said.

Evan pointedly went back to his food. “Never mind.”

After the uneven start, the rest of the evening was comfortable. Evan built a fire in the fireplace and they talked long into the night. Scott was surprised to find Evan was an interesting, and, if he hadn’t been the sheriff, pleasant person to be around. Irmtraud had told Scott about how Evan had been going through a subtle transformation after his ghostly encounter, which he still resolutely would not talk about. It was, she said, as if he had been dying inside before; now, after this meeting which he didn’t talk about, he was slowly coming back to life. Scott could see it when he watched Evan talk with Kurt and Irmtraud. Sometimes he would sit quietly, listening, and there would be something sad and lonely about him, but then he’d laugh at a joke and there would be a spark of light in him.

There was something else which was quite apparent to Scott -- Evan liked him, and, against his own better judgment, he was finding he liked Evan, too. Somehow they clicked on the same wavelength. Scott didn’t even try to figure it out, considering how different their circumstances were. Evan asked a lot of questions -- friendly, not probing -- about him and actually listened to his answers, which Scott had found many adults didn’t do.

Kurt and Irmtraud excused themselves and headed for bed, and Evan and Scott stayed up, deep in conversation. They talked about movies, being a teenager, music, life in general. Evan even mentioned his brief marriage to an army nurse in Vietnam which had ended when he didn’t re-up and they realized they had nothing in common but the Army and the war.

Scott quietly reintroduced the subject of the ghost. Evan laughed tiredly, then leaned back in his chair by the fireplace. “Why are you so interested in that?”

“Well,” Scott said with an attempt to be casual, “I’m interested in unusual things like that -- that really happen.”

Evan settled in and looked at the quiet flames. “Well, okay. I’ll tell you a little bit.” Scott shifted forward in his chair. “There was this old farmhouse west of town. It hadn’t been lived in for almost 80 years. Someone had been murdered there, and the family had moved out. It was still standing, which didn’t make any sense. And there was this yuppie couple from Chicago that decided to come up here and play farmer. They had a prowler, and the prowler turned out to be a ghost.”

“Really? It was really a ghost?”

Evan nodded. A faint, faraway smile came over his face. “Hanny McConnell.”

“Is the house still there?” Scott asked.

Evan shook his head. “The couple had it torn down, then decided not to build a new one. They sold the land and went off somewhere, I don’t know.”

“But what happened to the ghost?”

Evan sat up, obviously no longer interested in talking about this. “I don’t know.” He stood up. “I have to work tomorrow morning, so you’ll please excuse me.” He headed for the door, then a thought occurred to him and he turned back to Scott. “Are you doing chores for Kurt?”

“No.”

“You doing anything tomorrow morning? You got plans with school friends?”

“I don’t really have school friends yet.”

Evan thought for a moment. “You want to help me out with something? I’m going on a little fishing trip. Want to go?”

Scott couldn’t see why not. “Sure.”

“I’ll pick you up around seven.”

******

Evan and Scott were on their way by seven. Scott noticed that Evan didn’t seem as if he was headed for a relaxing morning; he was definitely up for something.

Evan steered his gold Jeep Cherokee off the county road onto a series of more and more obscure back roads until they came down two ruts in a pasture to a small winding stream. Evan parked and pulled some tackle from the back. Scott got out and looked around with modest disbelief. The stream was no more than three feet across and a foot deep. “You want to fish here? What are we fishing for, minnows?”

“Actually,” Evan said as he pulled out another bag, “I’m fishing for some big game.” He pulled out a mammoth pair of binoculars. “Go on, go ahead and set up. I need to find a good spot.”

Wondering what was going on, Scott set his line as Evan climbed around on the bank a bit, looking off at a farm nearly a quarter mile away. Evan looked at the farm through his binoculars, then starting talking to himself. “Okay, that’s good.” He pulled a piece a paper out of his pocket and consulted with it, then went back to the binoculars.

Evan’s observations were interrupted when the morning breeze carried an engine noise towards them. Evan froze for a moment, then darted away from the stream. “Scott -- play dumb!” he said as he vanished behind his Jeep.

A pickup truck appeared on the opposite bank, and a mean-looking man in his 60s glared at Scott. “What are you doing here?”

It wasn’t hard for Scott to play dumb. “Fishing?”

The man harrumphed and looked at the Jeep. “That’s not your car. That’s Sheriff Pierce’s car. You tell him for me -- if he doesn’t stop harassing me, I’m talking to a lawyer.” The man looked around at the surrounding bushes. “You hear me?” he shouted. He turned the truck around and left.

Scott kept fishing innocently until the man was out of sight and Evan reappeared. He frowned and looked at the Jeep.

“What was that?” Scott said.

“That was Curtis Elliot, farmer and entrepreneur. He’s been supplementing his income by selling stray dogs to an experimental laboratory. And it is my considered opinion that when there aren’t enough stray dogs to fill his needs, he steals dogs from the area.” Scott grimaced. “We got a call in yesterday about a family pet disappearing in a very strange manner, and I’ll bet you the family farm that dog’s in there.”

Scott thought about this for a moment, and he shuddered. “That’s sick. What are you going to do about it?”

“Well, unfortunately there isn’t a law against selling animals as experimental fodder,” he said, getting increasingly agitated. “All I can do is try and catch him on the theft charges.”

“Why don’t you just go in there?”

“I’d love to. But I don’t have probable cause. I can’t get a warrant.” He looked around angrily, then picked up his fishing gear and put it in the back of the Jeep.

The ride back was quiet as Evan stewed on his thwarted effort. Scott tried to liven the atmosphere by saying, “It’s funny he recognized your car.”

But Evan only muttered, “Small towns,” and the conversation died.

Evan had to stop off at the station before taking Scott back to the Keitzers, so with very little warning Scott found himself nervously walking into the lion’s den. The place was quite busy, and it seemed that every deputy must have been in there, milling around or working. He stepped inside and stood quietly off in the corner, trying to blend in with the wall. Evan marched through in his funk, and a woman deputy watched him with mild amusement.

“Don’t tell me -- Curtis Elliot,” she said. He growled as he went past. She shook her head and rolled her eyes dramatically. “Evan, Evan, Evan. How many times do I have to tell you. You’ve got to take invisible lessons.” Evan disappeared into his office, but a moment later he was out again and pointing a finger at her.

“I’m going to nail that man if it’s the last thing I do.”

“It may just be,” she said with a knowing smile. “Laura called a few minutes ago. He’s been complaining about you.”

He growled more vehemently. “Laura and the whole county council can just ...” He stopped, realizing the entire staff was now looking at him, waiting for him to finish the sentence. “No comment.” The others looked away, mildly disappointed.

“Is this the kid who’s living with the Keitzers?” the woman said, indicating Scott. Scott frowned. Great, everybody knew about him.

Evan gave his anger a rest. “Yeah. Scott Hunter, this is Kelly Anderson, who, for reasons that still elude me, is my head deputy.”

“Hi, Scott,” she said with a smile and offered her hand.

Scott shook it. “Hi.”

“Did Evan make you part of his vendetta this morning?” she asked with a glance at Evan.

Evan rubbed his face tiredly, then with another growl disappeared back into his office. Kelly looked at Scott. “So, how do you like it here?”

Scott shrugged. “It’s okay.”

“The Keitzers are nice folks. I hear you’re Stephan Hochmüller’s son.”

“Yeah.” Scott frowned. Were there no secrets in this place?

“You visit him much in Germany?”

“No. ... It’s too much money.”

Kelly frowned. “I thought he was one of those megabucks lawyers. Can’t he afford to bring you over?”

Scott had to think fast. “Well, my other dad doesn’t like taking his money. You know, one of those things.”

“Oh, ‘my two dads,’ huh? That’s too bad.”

“Kelly!” Evan’s voice roared out of his office.

She turned and walked to the doorway. “You bellowed?”

“Where’s last week’s highway report!?”

“Where’s anything in this place that receives Ted’s magic touch?” She pointed back over her shoulder, and Evan’s emphatic groan carried out into the main office.

Evan appeared in the doorway and cast a forlorn look at the people in the room. “I don’t suppose Ted is around here, hiding in the bathroom or something?”

One of the deputies answered, “He’s in Kenosha for the weekend visiting his sister.”

Evan looked at Kelly pathetically. “Why can’t I call Kenosha and tell him not to come back?”

“Come on, Evan,” she said quietly, “we all agreed. He’s got six months left. Let him coast.” He groaned.

Scott observed this in silence, getting a little annoyed at being stuck in this worst of all places watching a boring small-town soap opera. All he wanted was out of here.

A cheery voice broke the tension. “Good morning!”

Everyone turned to see an elderly woman come in, carrying a large covered basket. The collected deputies rose to greet her with enthusiasm, and Evan looked at her gratefully. “Mrs. Meister, what would we do without you?”

She carried the basket to a central desk, bubbling with cheerfulness. “I made bundt cakes today!” The deputies gathered around her eagerly, watching her unwrap her baked treasures. Plates and napkins appeared out of nowhere, and the crowd descended on the bundt cakes like sharks on a school of tuna. Scott watched, getting more and more impatient. Mrs. Meister spotted him, and, seeing that the food frenzy was taking care of itself, she went over to his corner with a smile. “You must be that new boy who’s staying with the Keitzers.”

That was it. What kind of place was this? Why didn’t they just leave him alone? Scott grunted something and turned away, trying to find a refuge somewhere.

Evan watched this rebuff and followed Scott to the new corner where he was trying to hole up. He stood over the pouting teenager, arms crossed. “Look,” he said softly, “I know we’re just a bunch of stupid boring adults, but is it going to kill you to say hello to her?”

Scott looked up at him sullenly, weighing his options. He knew he was pushing his luck. He acquiesced. He walked over to the woman cheerlessly, Evan following just behind him. “Mrs. Meister,” Evan said, “I’d like you to meet Scott Hunter.”

She smiled graciously, the slight forgotten. “It’s very nice to meet you, Scott. Would you like some bundt cake?”

He took the piece she offered and took a bite. Okay, he had to admit it was pretty good. “Thank you,” he said with his mouth full. Mrs. Meister looked pleased and turned back to the others.

Evan patted Scott on the shoulder. “Two minutes.” He went back into his office.

Two minutes later, Evan was driving Scott back to the Keitzers. “Thanks for coming along on the fishing trip,” he said. “It almost worked.”

“I don’t understand what you were doing,” Scott said, coming out of his bad mood.

“I need to prove that Elliot has the Pfeiffers’ dog. He tried to make it look like the dog pulled the chain open, but that dog would have needed a bionic neck to break that by itself. I can prove the dog was stolen, and if he’s got the dog, I can prove he’s in possession of stolen property. And if I’m really lucky, the dog will still have its tags on, so I can prove he knew the dog belonged to someone and he didn’t do something about it. It isn’t exactly worth five to ten years, but at least I can slow him down.” He frowned thoughtfully. “Nobody believes me. I know Elliot is doing this, but everyone refuses to believe someone here could do such a thing. They have kind of a lofty opinion of themselves and their neighbors. ‘That’s a big city crime, it couldn’t happen here.’ That’s how he’s been getting away with it all this time. Laura Iversen -- she’s the chair of the county council -- her dog disappeared a week ago. She had a fit, but she wouldn’t listen to me. She said Mimi ran away because she was going to have puppies and she ‘was following her instincts’ to have them out somewhere. That’s a bunch of bull. Cairn terriers don’t have instincts to have their puppies in the wild. Besides, Mimi wasn’t due for another three weeks. It makes me sick that somebody could do that, hand over other people’s pets to a life of torture ...”

Evan drove in silence for awhile. Scott thought about it, relating to the missing dogs.

“Isn’t there anything you can do about it?” Scott asked.

Evan shook his head. “We’re stuck in a catch-22. The only way we can prove what he’s doing is to get onto his property, but we need a search warrant. But we can’t get a search warrant because we don‘t have enough proof to convince a judge to issue one.”

“Well, why don’t you find out when he takes them to the lab and look for the missing dogs then?”

“Great idea, but no one ever knows when he takes the dogs. You see, that’s what got me suspicious in the first place. Everybody knows he’s selling strays. He doesn’t hide it. The letter carrier and neighbors have reported seeing his dog population go up and down, but no one -- no one -- has ever seen him leave the farm with dogs.”

Scott grimaced. “Maybe he’s eating them.”

“No, he’s shown off the checks from the lab. He’s selling them. And by now you’ve figured out what kind of community this is. Everybody knows everybody else’s business. The fact that he could be doing this for nearly a year and no one has ever seen him take the dogs away started eating at my brain. It doesn’t work that way in a place like this -- unless he’s hiding something. And that’s when I started going through the missing dog reports and putting two and two together. I’ve had deputies keep an eye on the place, but I’m sure he’s got a police scanner and he’s listening to us. If I put somebody out here, he just doesn’t leave the farm.”

Scott was beginning to understand why Evan was trying so hard to get this man. “What if you gave me the missing dogs’ descriptions and I went down --”

“No, you can’t. He could make a real good case for criminal trespass. Besides, he knows you’re with me. You get caught doing anything, it goes into his harassment case against me.” He sighed. “I’m just plain stuck. I’ve spent hours on the GovNet trying to get help on this, but nobody’s had anything like this.”

“What’s the GovNet?”

“It’s an after-hours computer network of mostly government employees across the country who compare notes on problems they’ve got. But no one’s been able to help me with this one.”

“Government employees,” Scott said carefully. “Like, federal employees?”

“Some. Mostly it’s state and local. I take my laptop computer home every night and log on. My phone bills are horrendous. But whatever it takes, I’ll do it.”

Scott was getting deeply frustrated as he thought about what Curtis Elliot was doing. Evan’s anger was making more and more sense. “Well, if I can help, let me know.”

Evan smiled. “Thanks. I appreciate that. Oh, and thanks for being nice to Mrs. Meister. She’s kind of dotty, but she’s the best thing that ever happened to Saturday morning.”

Scott shrugged. “She comes by every Saturday?”

Evan nodded. “She lives next door to the office, and since her husband died five years ago all the people she has to cook for is us.” Evan smiled. “It’s the high point of her week, and it’s certainly the high point of ours. I mean, everybody shows up, whether they’re on duty or not. There’s a story going around that someone could steal the entire county some Saturday morning because we’re all chowing down in the office.” He chuckled to himself. “It’s not true, but it makes a good story. And everybody believes it. I mean, once one of the county council members showed up on a Saturday morning to take a head count because he “knew” no one was out ... patrolling ...” Evan stopped, something beginning to click in his brain. He worked on it for a long moment. “I wonder,” he said as he thought. Then he laughed.

He turned the Jeep into the Keitzers’ drive as Scott wondered what he was cooking up. He stopped in front of the house and smiled at Scott. “Thanks. You may have given me an idea. I’ll be in touch.”

Scott got out, and Evan roared away.

******

Paul’s life in the home was becoming one big routine: up at seven for breakfast, exercises at eight, a meeting with either Samantha Eppler or Dr. Cosgrove at 8:30, free time until 11, then lunch, then rest time in the afternoon, then crafts until four, then cleaning up the building and grounds before dinner at six, then free time until lights out at ten.

He had checked the iron gate on the front door. It was too complicated for him to unlock without a sphere, so he was stuck. But at least now he knew his life wasn’t in jeopardy. The third day in the home had come and gone and he was still quite alive, so he had to accept that there was something wrong about how he remembered things. He did not understand why it was he could not remember. He remembered everything, word for word. Why was he unable to remember now? It was frustrating. Even more frustrating was that every night he seemed to have a dream about a young man holding a sphere. He did not understand why he saw this every night, and besides, what would a Planet Earth person be doing using a sphere?

Every morning he had a meeting with Samantha, except on Tuesdays, when he saw Dr. Cosgrove. They both had asked him lots of questions, usually the same ones day after day -- how many times did they want him to tell them he was what they would call a navigator and map maker? -- and Dr. Cosgrove had also looked at his wound. He knew they thought they were helping, but he could tell they didn’t really care about their patients. They didn’t take the time to know them, to understand that each one was different. Paul noticed that Dr. Cosgrove was very fond of summing up people in one or two phrases and then seeing that phrase instead of the person. Samantha tended to do the same, but while Dr. Cosgrove did this with brisk efficiency, Samantha did it with some sadness. Paul watched her carefully as she worked. She seemed weighed down, but her burden was much heavier than the silver chain she always wore. Paul came to the conclusion that she was sad and tired all the time because she thought there was nothing she could do. But of course there was. When he tried to tell her, however, she didn’t listen. What she was hearing was not his words, but the words of “a trauma-induced amnesiac with cognitive dysfunction.” Well, no matter. He had to remember, and then he had to figure out how to get home. That was what mattered.

******

Scott started another week of school. He was meeting other students, and he was even invited over to a classmate’s house that Friday night. A group nicknamed “The Video Club” met on Fridays to watch rented movies and eat lots of unhealthy food. One person picked the films for a chosen night, and the idea was to have a “theme” double feature. It sounded as if it could have some potential, the other kids involved were all right, and it certainly was better than studying. He accepted.

There was another student who wasn’t in the group, however, who had befriended Scott. Dick Pearson didn’t hang out in the socially acceptable circles. He smoked without trying to hide it, and there were rumors that he snuck beer onto the school grounds once in a while. Dick was a good talker and a good listener. There was something exciting about him, almost dangerous. Scott could relate to dangerous. Dick wasn’t afraid to talk back to teachers, he didn’t seem afraid of much of anything. Scott almost envied him. Scott always had to be careful, and Dick was the least careful person he knew. Scott wished he could be like that.

Dick Pearson’s rebelliousness underscored a new problem that Scott was facing. Ever since he had found out his true heritage, Scott had had to keep it a secret which he could share only with father. But his father was gone; now he had no one with whom to share who -- and what -- he was. Scott was discovering a horrible truth about life: A secret you can share with only one person is a burden, but a secret you can tell absolutely no one is torture. It was as if he had an itch he couldn’t scratch, day after day.

He was beginning to feel as if he was going insane. Sometimes the anger and loneliness would roll around inside him and gather so much momentum that he would have to cut class just to get away for fear he’s blurt something out in front of the others. Several times he had been awake all night struggling to keep the scream inside his chest. During lunch at school once he thought his lungs were going to burst if he didn’t jump up on the table and tell everyone. A couple of times he let off steam by going out into the empty fields at night and shooting off blue fireworks with his sphere. Once, just because he could, he torched a tree. He stood there, standing between the crackling flames and the cool, silent anonymity of the night, wondering if one day he too would go up in flames. Or would he simply vanish in the night?

Then there was the problem of the coin’s flip side -- he was angry at himself for not being enough like his father so he could get himself out of this mess. Every night he would connect with his sphere, trying to search for his father somehow. He didn’t know what he was doing, but it made him feel better to try. Well, most nights it made him feel better. Sometimes the fear and guilt would rush up and possess him all night, blocking sleep and wringing him out like an old wash cloth. Why hadn’t he stayed in Omaha and looked for him? Why couldn’t he find him? Why had he chosen to save himself and abandon his father? ... Why couldn’t he “do” something?

The Keitzers could tell Scott was going through a terrible time, but he turned down their sincere offers of help. How could they help him? How could they understand what he was going through?

But Dick understood. Scott didn’t tell him the details, but Dick didn’t need to hear them. He knew isolation. He’d been on the outside of society since he was 12. He knew anger. He’d been in reform school twice. He knew taking care of himself because no one else would.

The two sat out behind the barn on the Pearsons’ rundown farm, watching the sun sink in the cold November sky. They’d only been out of school for an hour, but Dick was already working on his third beer. Scott was nursing one but not feeling good about it. Dick’s derisive laughter was still ringing in his ears after he had refused outright to try a cigarette. So he pretended to drink, trying not to sputter when beer actually went down his throat.

“My old man doesn’t mind when I cut class,” Dick said. “He doesn’t think high school is good for anything. He’s right about that.” He took another long pull on his beer. “So what’s your old man like?”

Scott shrugged. “He’s okay. He’s ... different, you know? He’s okay.”

“Well, if he’s okay, how come he kicked you out?”

“He didn’t kick me out. There were some problems, and everybody figured it would be better if I stayed here for awhile.” Scott could tell he didn’t really believe him, but Dick didn’t push.

Dick flicked his cigarette butt away. “What’s Seattle like?”

Scott smiled. “It’s great.”

“Lots of stuff to do there?”

“Yeah.”

Dick pitched his beer bottle out into the empty pen behind the barn. “I hate this place. I’m going to get out of here as soon as I can.” He lit another cigarette. “I ran away a couple times. They locked me up. But I’m turning 18 next month and I’m going to be saying goodbye and never coming back.” He took another drag on his cigarette, then started to giggle. “Go get all the beer bottles and set them up on the fence.” Dick went into the house and Scott went for the bottles. He discovered quite a collection out in the pen, and in a short time he had at least 20 standing up on the fence. He was putting the last one in place when he heard the crack of a small caliber pistol behind him and the bottle broke in his hand.

He spun and looked at Dick, who was laughing, a .22 pistol in his hand. “That’s not funny, man!”

Dick laughed some more as he waved the gun. “Hey, it’s only a .22! It can’t hurt you!”

Scott walked angrily over to Dick, who was taking a casual aim at another bottle. “It’s not a toy! You could have killed me!”

“Only if I’d wanted to,” he said as he squinted at his target. He squeezed the trigger and another bottle broke. He handed the pistol to Scott. “You ever shot a gun before?”

Scott’s anger was abating, as it obviously wasn’t doing the least bit of good. “No.”

Dick, whose brain was by now a little soggy, eyed him with surprise. “Well, we have some catching up to do.”

******

Two hours and several boxes of ammunition later, Scott was on his way to becoming a marksman. Scott suddenly realized what time it was, and Dick drove him to the Keitzers’, dropping him off at the head of the long driveway an hour after Scott was supposed to be home. As Scott walked toward the house, he was gearing himself up for the discussion he knew was waiting for him.

Sure enough, when he opened the door, Kurt and Irmtraud rose from their fireside chairs. The dinner table was set, but there was no food on it. Kurt took his old pocket watch out and looked at it with a frown.

“Where have you been?” Irmtraud said worriedly. “We were afraid something had happened to you.”

He shrugged. “I was talking with a friend, and I lost track of time.”

“You have a watch,” Kurt said. “Use it.” Scott started taking off his jacket when Kurt frowned and sniffed. “You smell of beer. What is this?”

Scott rankled. He knew he was wrong, but he wasn’t going to admit it. “I didn’t have very much.”

Kurt looked outraged. “For you any is too much. You are 16. The legal drinking age is 21. What would happen if Evan were here?”

Scott sighed impatiently. “Well, Evan isn’t here, okay?”

“Where did you get it?” Kurt asked.

Scott crossed his arms. They’d find out anyway. There were no secrets in this place. “Dick Pearson.”

The couple reacted with disappointment. Scott knew they would. They didn’t understand.

“Scott,” Kurt said, “Dick Pearson is not a good person. You should not spend time with him.”

“He’s my friend, all right?”

Irmtraud laid a sympathetic hand on Scott’s arm. “Scott, he is no one’s friend. ... You must be very careful.”

“Well, sometimes I get tired of being careful all the time. Look, I’m not very hungry. Can I skip dinner and go study in my room?”

He tried to leave but Kurt detained him. “Scott, we are here to help you. Do you understand that?” After thinking about it, Scott nodded. “We are old people, sometimes we forget how it is. And it is hard for you, with your father missing. But you must make good choices now. You must be wise. That can be hard when you are so young. But you have no choice, I think.” Scott nodded again and went to his room.

The next morning at breakfast the mood was conciliatory, and Scott made his peace with Kurt and Irmtraud. He didn’t necessarily agree with them, but he would try to do what they wanted.

******

Evan called Scott Thursday evening. He had his plan in motion, and it would soon be time to see if Elliot would take the bait. “Want to go ‘fishing’ again Saturday?” was all he’d say about it. Scott took him up on his offer. So, after spending a horrible Friday night with the Video Club watching “Flash Dance” and “Grease 2,” he was more than ready for whatever Evan had concocted.

Scott was surprised that Kurt and Irmtraud woke him at 4 a.m. for a hearty breakfast. Evan picked Scott up at five, driving to a road near Elliot’s farm in the predawn darkness. Evan slowed and turned off his lights. They passed a county patrol car stationed at the intersection of a gravel road. Evan waved to the deputy, then turned down the road. He drove about 100 yards, then he eased the 4x4 off the road and hid it behind a hedge and a few trees.

“I checked with the letter carrier on this route after I dropped you off last Saturday,” Evan explained quietly. “He said Elliot’s got a full house of dogs. So I’ve put a deputy at the junction up there ever since. There’s been somebody there, 24 hours a day. It looks like it’s supposed to be a speed trap, but Elliot’s had a clear view of the car from his house. He can’t get anything past there without the deputy seeing him coming for almost half a mile, and there’s no other way out. He’s been giving the deputies some pretty nasty looks on his way past, so I think this is working.”

“What are you doing?”

“You gave me an idea. The problem was, our surveillance has been sporadic, and he always seemed to know we were there even though we didn’t want him to. So all he had to do was wait until we were gone. But,” he said, smiling, “I think we’ve got a way now to force him to make his move when we’re ready ... I hope.”

“But can you stop him just because he’s driving away with the dogs?”

“No. But I have photos of three missing dogs, and if I see even one in his truck, that’s probable cause. I can stop him.”

They settled in, waiting. Scott could see lights come on down at the farm as the sky grew lighter, and he wondered what was going to happen.

The sun was up and Scott was napping when suddenly the police radio crackled on. “County Three, this is base, over.” Scott recognized the voice as Kelly’s.

“County Three.”

“Dave, Mrs. Meister’s here, and you are going to go into a chocoholic fit when you see these brownies. Over.”

“I’m on my way. Out.”

Scott looked over to the patrol car, and he saw the car drive away towards town. Scott watched in amazement as the car disappeared, then he stared at Evan. “You’re setting him up!”

Evan laughed. “Like a bowling pin.” They looked down at the farm, and it wasn’t more than three minutes before they saw the house’s front door open and a figure jog out to the barn. “Got him,” Evan said with obvious satisfaction. Scott looked at Evan, and he was suddenly very grateful this man did not work for the FSA.

Fifteen minutes later, a pickup truck pulling some kind of homemade trailer emerged from the barn. Evan reached for his radio dial and set the channel to a civilian band. He picked up the microphone. “Orange Blossom, do you read me, over?” was all he said and replaced the microphone. Scott shuddered at the phrase, hoping Evan didn’t notice in his concentration. “Stay put,” Evan ordered before slipping out of the Jeep.

Scott’s adrenalin was up as he watched the pickup and trailer approach. Then his attention was pulled away by a sputtering engine noise in the opposite direction. His mouth fell open. It was the Keitzers’ car, coming down the road towards the pickup. Steam was spewing out from under the hood, and the car swerved, stopping at an angle in the middle of the road. There was no way the pickup would be able to get around it. Scott watched as Kurt got out angrily and popped the hood, exclaiming something in German and gesturing theatrically. He began to fuss with the engine as Scott watched the pickup drive by, slowing to a stop just beyond them. He could hear muffled barks coming from inside the trailer.

Suddenly Scott heard Evan curse. “The trailer doesn’t have windows!”

“What?” Scott asked in a sharp whisper.

“I can’t see the dogs!” Evan was beside himself.

Scott looked at the trailer. Indeed, there were vents near the roof, but there were no windows. Scott watched as Elliot got out of the truck’s cab. He was obviously upset that these people were stuck in his way. Kurt was playing it up for all it was worth, apologizing and fretting over what was happening. Scott looked over at Evan, who was watching helplessly. “What are you going to do?” he called over in a whisper.

“There’s nothing I can do!”

But Scott knew there was something he could do. He unlatched his door and slipped out silently. Evan saw him and shook his head sharply. “No!” he said in a loud whisper. “No! You can’t go near that truck!”

Scott moved along the hedge away from the truck. Elliot was absorbed in yelling at Kurt, and Scott stepped out from behind the hedge tentatively. Kurt saw him and drew Elliot’s attention away to the steaming engine, and Scott crossed the road quickly about 25 feet behind the trailer. He jumped behind a hedge and, making sure he was out of everyone’s sight and hearing range, he produced his sphere. He connected with it, then looked at the trailer’s back door. Open, he thought. I want the door to open so Evan can see inside.

There was a slight, low, almost imperceptible rumbling sound from inside the trailer. Then the door popped off its hinges with a gentle whooshing sound, flew through the air, and landed with a thud on the gravel road about 15 feet away. Scott watched in horror as everyone stopped and turned to stare at this, dumbfounded. Then the confused silence was shattered as 20 stir crazy dogs saw their chance and tumbled out of the trailer, barking wildly and scattering across the fields.

Evan stepped out from his hiding point and walked up to the trailer’s doorway, staring open- mouthed at the door and then at the doorway. Elliot appeared beside him and let out a blue streak that would have made a sailor blush. Evan looked at him, nonplused. “Hi. You seem to be having some trouble with your trailer.”

“Pierce!” Elliot fumed. “I’m going to put your head over my fireplace with the rest of my trophies!”

“You think I did this?” Evan said with astonishment, then looked at the door again.

Kurt and Irmtraud joined them, staring at the door. Scott came out from behind the hedge, trying to look baffled. Elliot continued his invectives and promises to end Evan’s career. Evan looked at him, shaking his head slightly, and cast his gaze into the trailer. He spotted something, and his face brightened into a radiant smile. “Hi,” he said gently, and stepped up to the doorway. He reached in and picked up a pathetic-looking and very pregnant Cairn terrier. He scratched under her chin and comforted her. “I know, it’s been tough.” He looked at Elliot, who had suddenly stopped his tirade at the sight of the dog. “Mr. Elliot, I happen to know the owner of this dog, and I think she’d like to have a long talk with you.”

******

With a search warrant finally issued by Judge Pennebaker, Evan and an organized swarm of deputies descended on Elliot’s farm. Their search quickly produced more than enough evidence to indict him on a variety of counts, from possession of stolen property to cruelty to animals. Scott found it expedient to stay with the Keitzers off to the side, until Evan signaled him to follow into the house. Dreading the conversation to come, Scott nevertheless obeyed and walked in behind the sheriff.

They entered the empty kitchen as deputies moved back and forth in the hallway. Scott stood innocently at what he considered a safe distance from Evan, but the man signaled him a little closer with a confidential air. “What did you do to that door?” he asked quietly.

“Me?” was Scott’s clever reply.

“Yes, you.”

“I didn’t touch it,” Scott stammered emphatically.

Evan frowned at him. “You left my car like a man on a mission and one minute later that door was in orbit.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly touch the door,” Scott said, amending his story.

“Yes?”

“Well, you see, I had this dog whistle.”

Evan’s eyes widened with disbelief. “You had a dog whistle?”

“Well, yeah. I thought if I blew the whistle the dogs would ...”

“Knock the door into the next county?”

“Yeah, it was really amazing the way the door came off, isn’t it?” he said, changing tacks at the finish line.

“Dog whistle.”

Scott nodded.

“Where is this dog whistle?”

Scott shrugged. “I guess, ... I dropped it.”

Evan chewed on this for a moment. “You know, Scott, that’s the second most stupid story I’ve ever heard in my entire life. But, as I have no other explanation, I’m going to accept it. Would you like to add anything before I write this up?”

“No.”

Evan cleared his throat loudly, then he grew thoughtful as he looked down at the table. A box of dog collars sat there, already tagged as evidence. He picked up one of the collars sadly, then let it drop back with the others. “I hate this. I really hate this.” He looked at Scott. “What really hurts is, yeah, we got Elliot, but all those dogs ran off. I wanted them as evidence, but I also wanted to get them back to their owners.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket and undid it. “DOG MISSING” was written across the top of the photocopied paper, and Scott could see a photo of a large German Shepherd-Collie mix surrounded by adoring children.

“That’s the one you were looking for?”

Evan nodded. He sighed. “Oh, well,” he said in a clipped voice and put the paper back in his pocket.

“Is it okay if I walk around? As long as I don’t touch anything.”

Evan nodded, and Scott left.

Walking out back, Scott saw several deputies concentrating on the barn. He could see several large cages inside, and the deputies were conferring and taking pictures. He nodded when one spotted him, and the deputy waved in return. There was a shed out beyond the barn, and when Scott reached it he saw that if he stood behind it no one could see him.

Did he dare do this? He had already pushed his luck to the limit today. But the picture of the dog and children hung on his mind. He wasn’t even sure he could do it. Things weren’t always going quite the way he wanted. The image of the peregrine appearing from nowhere and swooping down to land on his father’s hand came to him. Okay. He would try.

He connected with his sphere and then held it in his hand as he had seen his father do, holding it up towards the countryside. I would like that dog in the poster to return, he thought. Please come and find me. In his mind he saw the image of a large playful dog bounding through the tall grasses towards him, and he smiled. He scanned the area, but he saw nothing.

Then he heard a dog bark off in the distance. He could see a movement in the direction of the stream where he and Evan had gone “fishing,” but then he saw another movement further off to the right. Then he heard another bark off to the left. Oh, no. He quickly put his sphere away. Just as he had seen, a large Shepherd-Collie emerged joyfully from the tall grass of the pasture. The dog galloped up to him, eager for all the attention Scott could give. He petted the dog, laughing. Then a Labrador retriever bounded up, nearly knocking Scott over. There were some more barks off in the direction of the stream and more flashes of brown, black and tan through the fields. Within two minutes, Scott was hip deep in wagging tails, muddy paws on his jacket and pants, and anxious barks for attention. Scott heard the human commotion behind him, and the deputies from the barn appeared, staring at the scene. Scott laughed, then struggled to keep his balance as the four-legged throng pushed in. “It must be their lunch time!” he said and couldn’t stop laughing.

******

Before going back to the office, Evan took Scott with him on an important mission. Scott sat in the passenger seat of the patrol car as the Shepherd-Collie sat anxiously in back. Driving into a tiny town, Evan turned the car down a side street, then slowed when he saw several children playing in the street. The dog began to bark loudly, making Scott flinch as its powerful voice was amplified sharply in the confined area. The kids turned to look as the dog whimpered and paced back and forth on the seat. Evan stopped the car and got out as the children approached. Scott could see a woman come out of a house to investigate the ruckus. Evan opened the back door and the dog jumped free, to the squeals of delight from the children. The woman put her hand over her mouth and stared, starting to cry. She rushed down the steps as the children sang out, “Look, Mom! Brownie’s home! It’s Brownie! She’s back!” The woman looked up at Evan with tear-stained gratitude, then hugged him. He reacted awkwardly, backing off a step.

“Look, Joyce, this dog is evidence, so make sure she doesn’t leave town, okay?” The woman laughed and promised.

Evan stepped away from the scene as the children raced the dog back into the house and the woman followed. Evan watched them disappear inside, then got back into the car. He looked at the house for a long moment, trying to gather himself.

“This must be the fun part of the job,” Scott said quietly.

Evan’s gaze did not waver from the door, through which the celebration could still be seen. “Yeah. Jack Pfeiffer was a friend. He bought the kids that dog last year when he found out he had cancer, just in case ...” His emotions rushed up and overtook him. He looked away with a shaky sigh. He turned the key and drove away.

******

Back at the office, there were reports to fill out, questions to be answered and meetings to be had with the county prosecutor. Scott and the Keitzers, all witnesses, had to wait through most of it. Scott was sitting next to Kelly’s desk, giving her his statement, when a square, no-nonsense woman of 50 walked in through the front door. A noticeable, electric quiet came over the room as all the deputies stopped what they were doing and looked at her. 

Kelly got up and went to Evan’s door. He appeared and looked at the woman. Kelly went back to her desk as he signaled the woman into the office. She went in, and Evan closed the door behind them. The activity level in the outer room picked up slightly, but Scott noticed that everyone was keeping an ear cocked.

Kelly nodded to Scott. “That’s Laura Iversen, the head of the county council. She’s Evan’s boss. And they can’t stand each other.”

“Isn’t the little dog hers?”

Kelly nodded. “Mimi.” She shook her head. “What I would give to be a fly on the wall in there right now.”

About a minute later, Evan’s pointed voice came through the door: “I don’t know how it happened.” There was a pause, then Evan’s annoyed response came through even louder: “I told you, I didn’t go near it.” Another pause. Then a sarcastic: “Look, I don’t care if it sounds like _Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein_.” Pause. Then an emphatic: “If you bring that up one more time, I’m going to impound your dog as evidence for the rest of its natural life!”

There was silence from the office for a few minutes, and then Scott thought he heard Evan say, “Look, you owe me. Let me hire somebody.” Another minute went by, and then the door opened. The deputies turned back to their papers with such velocity that several risked whiplash. The woman left, shaking her head, and Evan stood in his office doorway, frowning. He looked at the pointedly busy group. “Would somebody please tell me why these things always happen to me?” Then he shot back quickly: “No. Don’t.” He looked at Kelly. “You through with Scott?” She shrugged, and Evan signaled Scott to come into his office.

“Well,” Evan said as they sat down on opposite sides of the desk, “depending on how the judge feels, the case may get tossed out with that ‘dog whistle’ business, but at least I know we’ve stopped Elliot. There’s no way he’s going to be able to get away with that again.” He seemed satisfied with that. “You want a job?”

“Doing what?”

“We’ve been having a problem with one of the deputies, and I’m not going to get into it because my blood pressure is high enough right now. But I have been authorized to pay someone the blistering sum of one hundred dollars to file all of our stray forms and circulars. Want the job?” Scott thought about it. “I’ll even drive you here and back.”

Scott shrugged. “Okay.”

“Good. Out there is a big box stuck under the work table. Tell Kelly what you’re doing and she’ll get you started.”

“You mean, right now?” Scott frowned.

Evan gave him an arch look. “You had some other timeframe in mind?”

As a matter of fact Scott did, but he could tell Evan wasn’t interested. He trudged out to Kelly, who helped him set up shop. Most of the papers dumped in the box were routine reports and fact sheets on wanted persons. He had to sort them by type and then alphabetize them. The box was bigger than Scott had imagined and contained at least six months of papers. It bore a distressing resemblance to the Grand Canyon, and like that awesome wonder of the world it was chronologically stratified, with the most recent materials on top. Scott was not amused. This was going to take a lot more time than he wanted to give. With a heavy sigh, he began excavating and grabbed a handful off the top.

The Keitzers said goodbye to Scott before they left, and Scott extracted a promise from Kurt to tell him how he rigged the car to break on cue.

A few minutes into his work, Scott concluded this wouldn’t be so bad after all. Everything fit into a couple categories, and it was going pretty fast. Piece of cake. Then he turned up the next piece of paper and choked.

Staring back up at him was his own picture and that of his father. It was a flyer dated two weeks ago, from just after they had left Madison. He quickly flipped it to the bottom of the papers in his hands. He was having trouble breathing as he glanced over his shoulder at the others in the room. Would they see him if he stuffed it in his pocket? The paper would make a lot of noise. He couldn’t risk it. A memory flashed through of how his father had changed that cassette tape just by looking at it. Why couldn’t he turn this into someone else’s picture the same way? His heart was in his throat. He fought off a panic attack.

Behind him, a competent-looking woman in her 30s came in the door and looked around. Kelly looked up from her work and smiled at her with recognition. “Hi, come on in.”

The woman smiled and went to Kelly’s desk. They chatted for a moment, and then Kelly called for Evan to come out. He came out with a frown.

“You’re supposed to come into my office and not just pull me out, remember? I know we forget sometimes, but I am the boss.”

She frowned. “Lighten up. This is a social call. You haven’t met Stephanie, have you? She’s renting that cabin from the --”

Evan stiffened and cloaked himself in authority. “Excuse me, I think Scott needs some help.” He turned his back on them abruptly and appeared beside Scott.

Scott flinched. “What?” he said breathlessly.

“How’s it going here?” Evan said stiffly, keeping his back to the women.

“What?”

“Play along,” he whispered as he gave Scott’s sorting a theatrical once-over. “No,” he said loudly, “keep these separate.”

Scott was getting himself back together. “What are you doing?”

Evan sighed. “Kelly keeps dragging in all these women to introduce to me. And I don’t want to deal with it right now.”

Scott calmed himself and looked back at the woman in question. She seemed nice. He thought for a moment, then smiled. “Look,” he said innocently, “I know she’s just a boring adult, but is it going to kill you to say hello to her?”

Evan growled at hearing his own words used against him and Scott laughed. He wagged a threatening finger at Scott. “You. You are in very big trouble. That is not nice.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, then steeled himself. He gave the sorting an official nod. “Keep it up,” he said loudly, then as he started to turn he muttered, “you die at dawn.”

As Evan faced the women, Scott quietly stuffed the flyer into his pocket and went on with his sorting.

Evan approached Kelly’s desk. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”

Kelly gave him a sardonic glance but said nothing. “This is Stephanie Dufay. She’s renting the Cromwells’ cabin.”

She extended her hand to him, and he took it. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He frowned. “I don’t think I like the sound of that. ... I’m sorry, but do I know you? Your name sounds familiar somehow.”

She nodded with a smile. “I used to be a photographer with the Madison Journal --”

Evan’s eyes lit up. “You! You’re the one who took that picture!” The two women looked at him with mild surprise, and he turned to Kelly. “Remember that picture from the paper I had over my desk?” 

He looked at Stephanie with ardent admiration. “That picture of the woman and the ice.” Stephanie smiled and nodded. “That was a great picture.” He looked at Kelly again. “You remember, the woman whose kids had fallen through the ice in Madison and they’d been pulled out but she was sitting there, staring at that hole in the ice, thinking, ‘My God, my kids could have been dead here’?” Evan looked about 12 years old. “I love that picture.”

Stephanie smiled. “Thank you.”

“I mean, for me, it typified everything I’ve tried to do here, you know, to keep people from having moments like that.”

“Thank you, that’s very kind,” she said. “Actually, I’m not just dropping by, I’m here for a reason. Can we talk for a minute?” He indicated the way to his office and walked along with her. “You see,” she said, “I’m doing a photo book called _Extraordinary People, Everyday Lives_ , and I understand you had quite an adventure with a ghost.”

Evan stopped dead in his tracks and regarded her coolly.

She blinked. “Did I say something wrong?”

He looked at her for a long moment, then pointed into his office. They went in. Scott could see the two talking, and he, along with everyone else in the room, noticed when Evan gestured to Stephanie and she reached over, pushing the door shut.

Scott stopped his work and went over to Kelly, sitting down tentatively. “What is it with Evan and the ghost?” he almost whispered.

She scratched her ear thoughtfully. “He went a little nuts. I’ve never seen him like that, before or since. He was absolutely obsessed with helping that ghost, well, leave. He almost lost his job, and he almost got killed. And he’s never told anybody the whole story.”

“Didn’t he have to put everything in his report or something?”

She shook her head. “Only the bare bones. There was something that happened that he’s not talking about. It really changed him. For the better, actually. He’s a much nicer person now.”

“What did he do that was so nuts?”

Kelly leaned back. “He broke into the county courthouse.”

“What?” Scott blinked with disbelief.

“The police archives are there. He didn’t have a key. And then he broke into the house where the ghost was. Twice. The owners weren’t living there. I mean, would you?”

“He broke in?” Scott couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Then when the owners finally said to heck with it and hired a wrecking crew to tear the house down, he comes running in, two steps ahead of the wrecking ball, and disappears into the house.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I wish I were. It turned out okay, actually. He obviously lived, and the county council let him stay sheriff, and he’s better than he was before. I don’t know.” She smiled knowingly at Scott. “Let me give you a piece of advice about our sheriff. Never assume you know what he’s going to do. He can really fool you. Never, “ever” play poker with that man. He’ll skin you alive.”

Scott nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He chewed on that as he went back to his work. If there was one thing he didn’t need in his life it was a clever sheriff with an unpredictable streak.

******

That Saturday afternoon was the homecoming football game for Rockland High School, which they lost, and that night was the homecoming dance. However, even though Scott finally had his much- anticipated homecoming party, it was a bittersweet evening. He and several of the other boys from the Video Club went stag, but he didn’t really know anyone well enough to get into the party. Plus, despite his best efforts to keep the thoughts away, he kept remembering the school dance in San Leon, and how much his father had enjoyed the dancing, and Kelly Jordan .... The accumulated losses in his life were a little overwhelming that night. He caught an early ride home.

******

Scott didn’t see much of Evan that next week. Scott walked over to the sheriff’s office from the high school every afternoon to do his filing, but Evan was kept busy in his office most of the time. He would come out to say hello when Scott arrived, but then something would pull him away. Left to his own supervision, Scott took the liberty of going through the old flyers and found two old ones on himself and his father. He wasn’t comfortable with throwing them out. He’d already trashed the other one. Wasn’t that destruction of official property or something? But he didn’t see much harm in accidentally misfiling them under, say, Miscellaneous Traffic Report Memos.

One afternoon while Scott was working at the office, Stephanie Dufay came in. Evan was in the middle of a meeting in his office but acknowledged her with a smile. She wandered over to the table where Scott was working.

“Hi, I’m Stephanie. I understand you’re Evan’s protégé.”

He shrugged with a laugh. “I wouldn’t say that.”

She put a pile of magazines she had been carrying on the table, then sat on the table’s edge, looking back towards Evan’s office. “How long have you known him?”

“About a month.”

“Kelly said something about him being part Indian. Do you know anything about that?”

He shrugged. “No.”

“Oh. He’s got great cheekbones.” Scott smiled as she continued to look at the office. “It’s strange. Everybody warned me about what a grouch he is, but I think he’s very charming.”

“Well, maybe he likes you.”

She smiled at Scott, then looked at the office. “He’s got good taste.”

“So you’re a photographer?”

“Yup.”

“Are you famous?”

She laughed. “No. Just good. That photo Evan liked so much was nominated for a Pulitzer. But I didn’t win.” She looked down at her pile of magazines with an arched eyebrow. She tapped the magazine on top. “He did.”

Scott looked, then caught his breath. On the cover of the photographer’s trade magazine, dated two weeks ago, was a photo of Paul Forrester with the headline, “The Nine Lives of Paul Forrester Come to an End ...?” The lengthy teaser talked about “a murderous ambush on the windswept banks of the Missouri River” and his mysterious disappearance.

“Is something wrong?” Stephanie said. Scott realized he was staring.

“... I met him. Once.”

“You want it?” she said, indicating the magazine. “I was just taking these over to the hospital.”

“Sure.” He took the magazine and, after another look at the cover, rolled it up and put it in his back pocket. “Did you know him?”

She nodded. “I interned at one of the Chicago dailies.” She added ironically, “Quite a guy.”

Scott eased in. “I met him after that Mount Hawthorne thing. I guess he’d changed a lot after that.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. The last time I saw him was six years ago when I was up for the Pulitzer. At a party after he’d won, he made a few interesting remarks in my direction about how the only dark room women should spend any time in is the kind with a four poster bed and mirrors on the ceiling.” She glanced at Scott with a little smile. “Sorry.”

He shrugged and went back to his work. She looked at Evan’s office for a while, then turned her professional gaze on Scott. “What do you do, Scott?”

“What do you mean? I go to school.”

“Is that all?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t do track or baseball or something?”

“No.”

“Play music?”

“No.”

“Give dance lessons?” He shook his head. “Card tricks?”

He laughed. “Why?”

“I like your face.”

He blinked. “I’m kind of attached to it myself.”

She laughed and leaned back, folding her hands behind her head. “No, no. I’m talking professionally. There’s something about you, I’d like to see if I can get it. I like photographing people who have more to them than meets the eye. Like the Keitzers. I’ve just about talked them into being in my book.”

Stephanie’s comment about him wasn’t sitting well and he tried to get low-key. “Did you get Evan?”

“He’s not cooperating.” She twisted her mouth into a thoughtful pose. “I got the skinny on the ghost business from Nancy down at the Post Office. But there’s something that man’s not telling. I wanted to get his picture down where they tore down the house ...” She shook her head. “You know, he makes a big deal out of everybody bugging him about it, but he loves it. He loves the fact that everybody wants to know and he’s not going to tell them.” She smiled a determined smile. “We’ll see.”

The meeting broke up in Evan’s office, and he stuck his head out the door and smiled at Stephanie. “See you,” she said to Scott and went into his office. Once again the door closed. Scott decided this might be getting serious.

******

That night, Scott poured over the lengthy magazine article. It recounted Forrester’s career, and Scott was interested to see the writer made note of his “personality change” after the incident on Mount Hawthorne. There were “two Paul Forresters,” the writer noted, “BMH and AMH -- Before Mount Hawthorne and After Mount Hawthorne.”

This was very noticeable in his work, the writer pointed out. “Even though Forrester had already cheated death on several occasions and come out untempered, the helicopter crash into the lap of the erupting volcano seemed to produce a profound effect on his photographic style. What BMH had been an acerbic eye, seeking to hold up the morbid or pained for public display, AMH his work became fresh and new. He discovered the gentle details of everyday life, bringing them into focus with a sensitivity never seen in his photographs before.

“Forrester himself also changed after the helicopter crash,” the article continued. “Never one to live life halfway, Forrester BMH had a well-earned reputation as someone who could drink even the hardiest comrade under the table and then steal his girlfriend for the weekend. Rebellious and what one could only diplomatically refer to as ‘brash,’ Forrester could be a managing editor’s nightmare. Missed deadlines, wildly overspent budgets and donnybrooks in the field and office were all-too-common experiences for editors who hired Forrester when he was in ‘one of his phases.’ Talent alone saved Forrester’s career more than once.

“But AMH, many sources reported Forrester was soft-spoken, always on time, met every deadline, and even traveled with a teenage son no one had ever known about. ‘It was,’ as Forrester’s longtime friend, reporter Elizabeth Baynes, commented, ‘as if he had become a new person.’”

To illustrate the point, the article included reprints of several of Forrester’s photos, including the two Pulitzer winners -- a Vietnam veteran regarding with horror his gnarled body in a VA hospital mirror and a blood-stained family group taunting British soldiers during an Ulster riot -- alongside a photo his father had taken in San Leon of the seeing eye dog barking for its dead master in an ambulance and a wildlife shot he had taken on his _Light of the Plains_ assignment.

Scott mused on this for a long time. What was Liz Baynes thinking right now? Was Eric Kendall grieving over his absent father, not realizing he was more than two years late? And what about Hal Walker in Ironwood, probably still mourning the loss of the real Paul Forrester’s mother, Stella? Surely some local reporter had asked him for comments on her son’s apparent death. What was he thinking? And then there was Jake and Kathy Lawton, and Antonia Weyburn, and .... So many others, Scott thought. Were any of them wondering about what had happened to him? Was anyone worried? ... Did anyone care?

And what could his mother be thinking right now? She knew Paul Forrester was really his father. She probably had heard the news reports about him. She must be going out of her mind with worry. He felt sick thinking about her, but there was nothing he could do.

There was also a sense of loss that seeing the photos of Paul Forrester didn’t make him feel better somehow. He had no photos of his father, not even a fuzzy snapshot. He’d trashed the wanted poster, knowing it was too hot to keep. Here in the magazine was the same face. He felt he should have been able to latch onto this image for comfort. But he couldn’t. It wasn’t the same face. These were all pictures of Forrester. He could tell with barely a glance. His father was so different. Why was it no one else could tell the difference?

He took out his sphere for his nightly ritual of searching for his father. Lately when he had been connected with the sphere, he was getting the feeling that his father was alive, but confined. He couldn’t explain the feeling, but it was more vivid every night. He connected with the sphere. Dad, he thought, tell me where you are. Show me where you are. He looked inside his thoughts, and he saw steel bars across a door. He jerked away from the image and the sphere fell quiet. Oh, God, he thought. Does Fox have his father? He shuddered and blocked the thought from his mind as best he could.

******

Paul waited patiently in Samantha’s office for his morning meeting with her as she was interrupted by several phone calls. She plunked down the receiver angrily after the last one. “I’m drowning in a sea of red tape!”

Paul looked around her with concern and saw she wasn’t drowning, and wondered why she would say she was. She wasn’t the one who had cognitive dysfunction ... or was she? Maybe that was why she lived here, too.

“Okay, Scott,” she said, then looked at him tiredly. Paul thought there was something wrong with her eyes, as if she were no longer alive. “Look, I’m tired of asking you the same old questions. Mind if we skip today?”

“Skip to where?”

She closed her eyes. “I set myself up for that one. Well, Scott, what do you want to talk about today?”

“I want to talk about Mr. Sweeney.”

“Okay. Shoot -- I mean, go ahead.”

“I don’t think you’re very nice to him.”

“Really?” she said, beginning to write something on her note pad.

“No. You don’t listen to him. Like you’re not listening to me.”

She snapped to attention at that. “What do you mean I’m not listening to you? Of course I’m listening to you.”

“You hear words, but you don’t hear what he’s saying. Do you know that for the last week he’s been telling you he has a headache?”

“He gets them. He just wants more attention.”

“Then why don’t you give him more attention?”

She blinked. “Because if I give him extra time, I have to give everyone the same amount.”

He regarded her. “I’ve watched you.”

She began to pull on the heavy neck chain defensively. “Oh, have you?”

“You don’t spend time with the residents.”

“What do you mean? We have crafts and reading and --”

“But everything you give them to do is something they do by themselves. It’s not something you do with them. You keep separate from them all the time.”

“I don’t have time.”

“You don’t have time to listen?”

“What do you want from me?”

“You don’t see what you’re doing.” He looked at her seriously. “You’re afraid. You’re afraid to know them.”

She stiffened. “That’s ridiculous. Why would I be afraid?”

“Because if you knew them, you’d have to admit they’re human beings, just like you.”

“Look, Scott, that isn’t the point,” she said defensively, trying to change the subject.

“Then why don’t you listen to Mr. Sweeney? There is something wrong with his head.”

She went back to her note pad and muttered, “He’s not the only one.”

“Why do you work here?” Paul asked pointedly. “You don’t like working here. You don’t like the people, you don’t like your work. You can leave. Why do you stay here?”

He had struck a nerve. She glared at him. “Because a long time ago I had a dream, okay? I thought I could make a difference. I thought I could help people, make their lives a little better. But then I got out into the cold, cruel world and discovered that people say they want to help, but they’re not willing to put up the kind of money these people need. ‘Yes,’ they say, ‘we want to help, but don’t ask us for our precious dollars.’ Well, I’m not a miracle worker. I can’t make things appear out of thin air.” Paul could not tell now if she was angry or sad, but it seemed she was both. “I mean, look at this dump. The paint’s peeling off the walls, the TV set only broadcasts in two colors, the floors need to be retiled, the bathrooms are a disgrace, and you expect me to work in a place like this and care!?” Her eyes were red. “I don’t know how things are on your planet, Mr. Heyden, but down here most people only pretend to care because life hurts too much when you really do care.” She stopped, tears falling down her cheeks. She slammed open a desk drawer with annoyance and pulled out a tissue, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose noisily, to Paul’s amazement.

“I never knew those sounded like that!”

She looked at the tissue curiously, then laughed in spite of herself. “No, this is the noisemaker,” she said, tapping her nose, “not this,” she said as she tapped the tissue.

“Oh.” Paul was disappointed by that. “My son once taught me how to play music on my face,” he said, then starting patting his cheeks and making different pitches with his mouth.

“You have a son?”

He blinked. “Yes.” This was a stunning realization. “... His name is Scott.”

She started writing. “Scott Junior?”

“No, Scott Hayden.”

She looked at him, then shrugged it off. “Where is he?”

Paul was troubled by this. “I don’t know.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“I don’t know.”

“How old is he?”

He thought hard on that. How is it that he could have just given Jenny Hayden the baby, but he saw his son as being nearly grown? He knew human children took longer to reach maturity than that.

Samantha saw his confusion and tried another approach. “What does he look like?”

“He has brown hair, brown eyes, two arms, two legs --”

“-- Okay,” Samantha cut him off gently, “he’s human.”

“Most of him, yes.”

She scratched her head on that one. She wrote as she spoke: “Brown hair and brown eyes. What else that’s distinguishing?” Paul didn’t understand. “Okay, how tall is he? Is he as tall as you are?”

Paul nodded. “Almost.”

“Okay.” She wrote. “Is he fat, or is he thin, or in between?”

“Thin.”

“Okay.” She wrote again. She asked him several more questions about Scott’s appearance, and he answered as best he could. But the image wasn’t clear, and the fact that he didn’t remember having a son and he didn’t know where this son was made him unhappy. She smiled as she finished. “Good. I think we’re getting somewhere.”

“But what about Mr. Sweeney?”

She had forgotten. “What about Mr. Sweeney?”

“There’s something wrong with his head.”

“Oh, that. No, but, he’s done this before.”

“No. There is something wrong. It’s right here,” he said, touching her on her temple. She shivered as a strange energy seemed to flow from his fingertips. She pushed his hand away. “Don’t touch your therapist,” she said shakily.

“I think you should do something about it,” Paul continued. “It will kill him if you don’t.”

Samantha concluded their meeting with a promise to take Mr. Sweeney to the hospital the next day, and when she did, and the doctors found a benign growth under Mr. Sweeney’s skull in the exact spot where Paul had indicated, she was almost afraid to make a note of it in her report book. But she did.

******

Dick persuaded Scott to skip his work that Friday. They sat in their usual spot behind the barn, talking and drinking beers. It seemed to Scott that the beer didn’t taste so bad this time, and although he knew he shouldn’t even have the beer in his hand, he caught himself swallowing by accident once in a while. Oh, well, a few sips wouldn’t hurt.

Dick wanted to know all about the famous “Dog Bust,” as it was now becoming known, but Scott kept the description of his own participation vague. Dick said Curtis Elliot had sounded him out once about picking up stray dogs for him, but he’d turned him down. “It was too penny-ante for me.”

“You mean you knew what he was doing and you didn’t tell anyone?” Scott said indignantly.

Dick shrugged and took another pull on his beer. “It wasn’t any of my business.”

Without thinking, Scott took a healthy swallow on his own beer, then caught himself when it was too late. Maybe he should put the bottle down somewhere out of reach. Nah, he thought. It was okay. Besides, it was almost beginning to taste good.

They talked about life for a while, and then Dick began to monopolize the conversation with talk of his plans for life after he turned 18 and a long dissertation on how he had been victimized by his teachers and the law and sent off to reform school. Scott nodded sympathetically throughout the lengthy oration.

“You don’t know what it’s like,” Dick said, shaking his head soggily. “Locked up. They don’t care about you or anything.”

“No, I know,” Scott nodded. Why was he saying this? He looked at his beer bottle and discovered with surprise that it was almost empty. Could he be ... No way. He’d know if he was drunk. He couldn‘t have inherited his father’s intoler -- intol -- ... problem with drinking. No. Couldn’t have. He wasn’t wasted. But he was getting rather sleepy, though.

“These people don’t know who I am,” Dick said philosophically. “They don’t care. Everyone thinks I’m just a loser kid. I’ll show them.”

Scott thought about this for a moment, then chuckled to himself.

“What?” Dick asked.

Scott shook his head, then laughed again.

Dick was intrigued. “What?”

“Nah.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Dick gave him a friendly nudge. “Come on, you can tell me.”

Scott looked at him, then laughed again. “You wouldn’t believe it.”

“Sure I would. What?”

Scott gave him a sly look. “You think people don’t know you. They don’t know me at all. I’m not just your average mild-mannered reporter, you know.” If there was a warning alarm ringing in Scott’s head, he was long past hearing it.

“What do you mean?” Dick said with a wicked grin.

Scott looked at him, then pulled out his sphere. “What do you think this is?”

Dick assessed the object. “A really big shooter.” They both laughed.

“No, it’s a secret.”

“What kind of secret?”

“A really good one.”

Dick nudged him again. “Come on, tell me.”

Scott smiled at him. “Nah. Watch.” He connected with his sphere, and Dick’s eyes grew wide.

“Wow! How did you do that?”

“Wait,” Scott said with a knowing smile. Bright blue Roman candles began to shoot out of the sphere, arching over the pen.

Dick was impressed. “That’s great! How did you do it?”

Scott did not answer, but turned his attention to the scattered piles of broken glass which had been their beer bottle targets the other day. Do it, was all he thought. One by one, the shards leapt off the ground and reassembled into intact bottles on the fence as if they had never been shot.

Dick stared at the sight. “Wow!” He looked at Scott, who had disconnected with the sphere. Dick took it and examined it carefully. “What else can it do?”

“Whatever I want. Well, I’m learning.” He looked at his companion with pride. “I did the trailer door in the Dog Bust.” Dick laughed. “And I got all the dogs to come back.”

“With this?”

Scott nodded.

“Wow. Wait ‘til my old man sees this.”

“No, don’t tell anyone. I can get into a lot of trouble.”

Dick wagged his head loosely. “Okay. But I got one question.”

“Yeah?”

“Can it do homework?”

They both laughed.

Towards dinner time, Scott called the Keitzers and, without telling them where he was, told them he was going straight on to his Friday night movie group. Dick dropped Scott off near the house where they were meeting that night. As he walked to the door, Scott thought his gate seemed a little unsteady, but then he hadn’t had dinner yet. Actually, he didn’t feel like eating. His stomach wasn’t quite right. It would be okay. He could handle it. He’d just sit and be quiet.

******

But he didn’t have the chance to stay quiet. In fact, the evening ended up being very noisy. It started innocently enough. Everyone was in a good mood because Brenda, the hostess for the evening and already a cook of some renown, had baked two batches of cookies in addition to a chocolate cake. Packed to the gills with sugar, the group settled in for the double feature.

The movies Brenda had selected at first amused Scott. _I Married a Monster From Outer Space_ was a 1950s thriller about aliens cloning bodies of Earth men in order to interbreed with Earth women after all of their own females had been killed. The movie was better than Scott thought it was going to be. He didn’t feel threatened by it. After all, he wasn’t the purpose of his father’s first visit. He was just sort of a “thank you” gift. The girls in the group didn’t like the film, however. One concluded the point of the film was “Don’t trust men. Period.”

But the second film bothered Scott. _Hangar 18_ was about an alien space craft crash-landing on Earth and then being held in a secret government laboratory. Scott had been getting a headache from too much sugar and not enough real food before the movie started, but when he saw the lab in the film, and especially the observation booth above the examination chamber strikingly similar to the one he’d been kept in, he began to get agitated. Ken, the cutup of the group, spotted this and began to needle him. As his head began to throb and his stomach screamed for something substantial, Scott made a valiant effort to stay calm. But then Ken made a stupid remark during the autopsy scene about how they should put Scott in one of those labs to find out what his problem was. In a flash Scott connected his fist with Ken’s nose. Both boys got in a few good licks before they were pulled apart, and the evening ended abruptly. For his trouble, Scott had the makings of a black eye, a swollen lip and the alienation of the other members of the group. The Keitzers picked him up, and he said nothing all the way home.

******

The next morning, Scott woke up with a raging headache. Grateful that it was Saturday, he put on some clothes and managed to make his way down to the breakfast table. He stopped with a shudder when he saw Evan sitting at the table, chatting with the Keitzers over breakfast.

“Good morning,” Evan said cheerily. Scott knew something was up, but he felt so rotten he didn’t care.

It was all quiet on the western front during breakfast, but when Scott finished he noticed the Keitzers quietly excuse themselves to go do the dishes. Evan stretched with satisfaction. Scott tried a quick exit.

“I gotta go get --”

“-- I thought we’d go into the office and you could finish up the filing. You’re almost done.”

“Now?”

“What’s the matter, don’t you want to get paid?”

Scott could tell this was not an optional activity. With a farewell to Kurt and Irmtraud, the two left.

Walking up to the car, Scott was waiting for the opening salvo he knew was coming. Evan stopped about 10 feet from the Cherokee’s passenger door. He looked at Scott’s shiner and still slightly swollen lip. “Did you know you broke Ken’s nose?”

Scott said nothing.

“Care to tell me what it was about?”

“Just a stupid movie.”

Evan nodded thoughtfully. “I hear you’ve been spending time with Dick Pearson. Is that where you were yesterday afternoon instead of at work?”

Scott said nothing at first, then angrily dug his hands deep into his jacket pockets. “You already know. Why bother asking me?”

“My dad used to call it the HQ -- the Honesty Quotient. How much you’re willing to own up to.” He looked at Scott seriously. “Scott, what you do is your decision. But I will tell you that Dick Pearson is jailbait. I promise you, as surely as the sun is going to come up in the east tomorrow, if you hang out with him, you’re going to get into trouble. He’s just a rotten kid.”

“Yeah, he told me all about how you’ve been hassling him.”

“Guaranteed he didn’t tell you why. His ‘poor me’ routine doesn’t work very well when people find out about the burglaries. And I’m sure he didn’t mention the assault with a deadly weapon charge.”

Scott recoiled.

Evan shook his head. “It was quite a scene. He shot up the car in her driveway. We couldn’t prove he knew she was in it.”

“Who was it?” Scott said softly.

“A teacher at school. You don’t need to know who. She decided not to press charges.” He frowned. “I really wanted to bust his balls on that one.”

“Did he really do it?”

Evan nodded. “We had a witness. And when I told him he wasn’t facing charges, he didn’t admit it, but he did comment that handguns weren’t very effective in that kind of thing.”

Scott started getting sick to his stomach. Evan looked at him for a moment, then turned his gaze to the brilliant autumn sky. “You know, it’s too nice a day to spend in that office. And you are almost done. Have you been over to Stephanie’s place? She’s got a great photo studio set up. Want to go?”

“Sure,” Scott said brightly. Evan tossed Scott the car keys and opened the Jeep’s passenger door. Scott stared at him. “What’s this?”

“You drive.”

“No, wait. I don’t have a driver’s license.”

“Oh. Well, you have your permit, right?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Evan shrugged. “Well, let’s write your parents and have them send a letter so I can get you started.”

“No, no, don’t,” Scott said quickly. “Don’t write.”

Evan paused and stepped back out of the car. “Why not?”

“Look,” Scott said with an edgy shrug, “just don’t bother them, okay? It’s okay. I don’t need to drive.” He handed the keys back to Evan. Now he knew how the Keitzers felt about lying to Evan. He didn’t like himself very much.

Evan scrutinized Scott for a long moment, then took on a slightly official air. “You know, I figured you were a runaway, and Kurt and Irmi being who they are, they called your parents. And since you were still here, it must’ve been okay. I even called Seattle to see if there was a missing kid report out on you.”

“You called the Seattle police?” Scott said with angry disbelief.

“Scott, it’s my job. You’re underage and on your own. I had to follow up. But they didn’t have anything, so I just left it.” He looked at Scott hard. “You’re not a runaway, are you? ... Are you a throwaway? Did they kick you out?”

Scott shuddered. This was terrible.

Evan took Scott’s reaction for a yes. He cursed bitterly. “I hate that. People like the Keitzers, who’d make wonderful parents, don’t have kids. And then other people have them and toss them out like old newspapers.” He looked at Scott, but Scott had to look away. Evan chewed on this for a long time, then looked at the car keys. “Do you at least know the mechanics of driving a car?”

“Sure.” Evan tossed him the keys again. Scott brightened, then stopped. “But it’s a stick.”

Evan looked at him dramatically. “Does that frighten you?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well, let’s find out.” They got in.

The trip to Stephanie’s wasn’t the smoothest thing in the world, and Scott was grateful that no one could see him. But, with lots of coaching from Evan, he got them there in one piece. He parked behind the dark blue GMC Jimmy in the driveway -- or, more precisely, the Cherokee stopped abruptly behind the Jimmy, a little too close for comfort. But Evan had only praise for his driving, and Scott felt as if he had accomplished something major.

Stephanie was going over contact sheets at the kitchen table with Sparky, her newly-adopted black Lab from the Dog Bust, sitting attentively by her side. She looked at Scott’s face with a frown as Evan and Scott sat down at the table. “Well, I was going to see if I could talk you into a photo session, but I see you decided to rearrange your face.” Scott shrugged noncommittally.

“He gave better than he got,” Evan said.

She shot Evan a wry glance as she continued her examination of a contact sheet with a magnifying glass. “This must be one of those rites of passage you males are so fond of.”

Evan gave her a “moi?” look. Scott looked at the scattered contact sheets on the table, and discovered one of the Keitzers taken in a studio. He picked it up and looked at it.

“I’m going to do another session at their house,” she said. “They’re really something. There are so many levels to them, it’s amazing.” She gave Scott a playful lift of the eyebrow. “Unlike some people,” she said dryly, tilting her head towards Evan. “What ya see is what ya get.”

Evan pouted. “I’m not going to be nice to you anymore.”

The phone rang. Stephanie picked it up, then held the receiver out to Evan. “For you.”

Evan took the call, which was from the office. He walked away from the table and talked quietly. Scott and Stephanie turned to the contact sheets.

“You getting anything good for your book?” Scott asked.

She nodded. “There’s something missing, though. I haven’t quite gotten the peg yet.”

“What’s a peg?”

“It’s the thing you hang a project on, like the focal point. The key.”

“I thought it was about extraordinary people in the everyday world or something.”

“Yeah, but there’s got to be more to it than that. I wanted to try a little writing in it. Something to tie it all together. So far, most of the people have been friends of mine, new friends here and old friends in Madison and around. But it’s got to be more than just ‘Here are my interesting friends.’ Besides, Evan’s been giving me a lot of good contacts here, so a lot of them are people he knows but I don’t. So that’s not quite it. It’s something else.” She shrugged. “I’ll get it.”

Evan finished his call and came back to the table with a professional air. “Sorry, duty calls. Scott, you want to come along? I’m sure you can finish up today.”

“Sure.”

They left after a slightly awkward scene at the door when the opportunity for a goodbye kiss was dampened by Scott’s presence. When Scott laughed and said for them not to mind him, Evan told Stephanie he would save it for later.

Evan had a brief meeting while Scott finished the filing. When Evan was done, he brought out some papers to Kelly’s desk.

“So,” Kelly said in her usual wry voice, “you and Stephanie seem to be hitting it off.”

He stiffened into a defensive pose. “Yeah, what of it?”

To Scott’s surprise, she smiled gently. “I’m just glad to see you happy. It’s been a long time.”

He softened. “Thank you.” They smiled at each other, two old friends and dueling partners finally letting down their defenses. Scott didn’t know why, but it seemed satisfying to him somehow. One of those “rites of passage” maybe.

******

Scott and Evan went fishing for real the next morning. Stationed out on a quiet river with plenty of food for both them and the fish, they wiled away the day, doing more talking than successful angling. Most of it was the usual fishing baloney, but once in a while they would accidentally stray onto a worthwhile subject.

“So, Stephanie seems to like you,” Scott said.

Evan nodded, seemingly a little surprised by it. “Yeah.”

“What’s so strange about that?”

“Well, I’d kind of come to the conclusion that I’d been disqualified from that kind of thing. But I guess not.”

“She seems real nice.”

“Yeah, she is.” He cast his line out into the gently flowing waters. “I don’t know how much your dad has talked to you about women, but my dad used to tell me -- before I was old enough to understand -- that there are women you like to be around for specific purposes and others you just like to be around, but when you find one who’s both, keep her.” He smiled. “Stephanie’s a keeper.”

“Why did you live with the Keitzers?” Scott asked, then quickly added, “Don’t answer if it’s none of my business.”

Evan looked out at the waters as if they were a million miles away. “My dad was quite a guy. He was a lawyer in town. The Keitzers hired him to take care of their citizenship application. They were worried about how much it was going to cost, but the night after they had their swearing-in ceremony, Dad threw them a big party and burned their bill. He was like that. Very big heart, always giving it away. I guess that’s why he died of a heart attack. Only 47.” Scott looked at Evan and saw that the wounds still weren’t healed. “He’d been so generous, Mom was really in a bind for money when he died. I was starting junior high, and I had a sister who was living in a hospital in Madison, so Mom had a lot of bills. We struggled along, and then she developed multiple sclerosis. I guess they say now that’s stress- related. By the time I was 15, she had to go into a nursing home. So the Keitzers took me in. I don’t know why. I was an angry kid. I probably would’ve turned into a Dick Pearson if they hadn’t been there. I mean, I wasn’t exactly a bundle of joy when I left, but I was on the fast track to nowhere when I moved in with them.”

Scott looked at Evan as he fished. He was beginning to understand why he had hit it off with him so quickly. Evan’s life hadn’t been a bed of roses, either. Scott wondered about his sister. No one had ever mentioned her. He concluded she had died and decided not to ask.

“It’s funny,” Evan said, casting his line back out into the water, “it must be because of the way they had to raise your dad during the war, but they didn’t just take me in -- they adopted me, in every way but legally. I was their kid. Even when I left for Vietnam, they wrote me every week and sent money and brownies and you name it.” He chuckled. “I remember one of the guys in my unit asked me why I had a different last name from my parents.” He watched the waters flow by. “They are my parents, you know. I’ve always wanted to tell them that, but I’ve never had the nerve. Mom died while I was in Vietnam, so Kurt and Irmi are all I’ve had for the last 20 years. I guess they saved my life almost the same way they saved your dad’s.”

A fish struck Scott’s line with such sudden ferocity that both Scott and Evan jumped. When Scott reeled it in, he discovered that despite its strong fight it was about an inch undersize. Scott squinted at Evan. “Can we round up?”

“Are you kidding? I’ll be on the horn to the DNR so fast it’ll make your head spin!”

“Give me a break!”

“Yeah, right across the chin.”

Scott tried to take the hook out of the wriggling fish’s mouth, but the barb was stuck. Evan came to the rescue with a Swiss Army knife and cut the line so Scott could slip the hook out the other way. He put the fish back in the water and it swam off angrily, ready to fight another day. Scott oohed and aahed over the knife, playing with its various implements and secretly wondering if he could afford such a beauty. He accidentally-on-purpose pocketed the knife, then laughed when Evan made a big deal about getting it back.

Scott put the hook back on the line and cast it out into the river, savoring the normalcy of this day. He tried not to think about the fact that he couldn’t live his life like this while everyone else could. He just tried to hold the moment and keep it intact, laying it beside the picnic with Tom above Black Hawk’s Cave in Madison in his catalog of favorite memories. They were his snapshots, to be taken out and lingered over, every last detail to be remembered, from the taste of the air to the feel of the fish squirming in his hand. Just about everyone else took these things for granted. But he knew he would be able to recall this scene with such vividness that he could relive it whenever he wanted. 

At least there was something good about this life he was being forced to live. He had learned not to waste the good times.

******

Paul noticed a subtle change taking place in Samantha. She was still tired and busy all the time, but she was beginning to listen to the patients a little more. Sometimes she actually talked with them as if they were people. She also seemed to be getting rather fond of Paul, although she still refused to believe who he was. But that wasn’t important. He knew who he was.

Mr. Sweeney had his surgery, and although he was going to be all right, he had to stay in the hospital for a while. Paul missed him, and he was pleased when one day Samantha asked him if he would like to go with her to visit him. However, she was very firm in extracting a promise from him that he wouldn’t run off.

They walked out to her car, but as she reached the door, she put her hand in her purse and then exclaimed angrily. “I locked the keys in the car!”

Paul looked in from the passenger side and he could see them in the ignition. He touched the lock on the door, and it unlocked gently. He opened the door and got in, unlocking her door by hand. She stared at him, but got in. She shrugged. “I thought I locked that,” she said and turned the ignition.

The visit with Mr. Sweeney was good for all of them, and on the way back Samantha turned into the parking lot of a small mall. “I need to pick some things up. It’ll only take a few minutes.”

They walked into the mall, and she went into a jewelry store to pick up her silver neck chain, which she had dropped off to be cleaned. As she put the heavy piece around her neck, Paul regarded her seriously.

“That must be very important for you, if you wear it all the time.”

She shrugged. “Not really. An old -- former -- boyfriend gave it to me. I guess I wear it out of habit.”

“It looks so heavy. I think you look better without it.”

“Well,” she said with a twinkle in her eye, “you’re welcome to get me something better if you like.” She went back out into the mall and walked through the center court towards a bookstore. In the court was a display of children’s drawings, and Paul stopped to look. “Remember,” she said, “you promised not to wander off.” He nodded, and she went into the store.

The theme of the display was “Our Home, the Milky Way.” The drawings were divided up into a section of starscapes, a section of spaceships, and a section of aliens. The starscapes were hopelessly inaccurate but entertaining, and few of the spaceships were practical. Paul did like the one with the pig at the controls, however. But he found the alien section fascinating.

Samantha came up behind him with a bundle in her arms and chuckled. “Recognize anyone you know?”

“Yes,” Paul said. He pointed at one drawing of a creature that looked like a cross between a parrot and an earthworm. “But they don’t have blue antennas like that.”

Samantha nodded. “I spotted that right away.”

He looked at her with astonishment, and she laughed, leading him away.

“What’s in the package?” he asked as he took it from her.

“Leftover magazines. The owner of the store donates to the house some of what doesn’t sell that month. Sometimes it’s a lot, sometimes it’s not much.”

Paul weighed the package in his arms. “This seems like a lot.”

“I have to go through them, of course, and make sure there aren’t things that would upset the residents. You know, like those gory crime things. Lately the favorite magazines seem to be surfing ones. The nature ones are always popular.”

“Sandhill cranes are very beautiful,” Paul said with a nod.

“You know about cranes?” she said with a smile.

“I’ve never seen one. But I would like to.”

“Well, we got some good nature magazines in there. Let’s see what we can find for you. And,” she said with a smile as she reached into the bag, “ta da!” She produced a paperback copy of _The Wizard of Oz_. Paul looked at it blankly, not knowing what this meant. “Oh, come on,” she said, “ _The Wizard of Oz_? There was a book before the movie, you know. I’ve decided to read to whoever wants to hear it after dinner.”

Paul smiled. “Good. I think everyone will like that.”

Back at the shelter house, Samantha put out the magazines in the recreation room after editing the choices. She proudly presented Paul with a slick magazine filled with exquisite photography. The cover story, appropriately enough, was on sandhill cranes. Paul sat at the table and turned to the story eagerly, but he balked when he opened to the two-page spread that started the feature: The photo was a striking sunrise shot of the cranes on the Platte River. There was something familiar about the frosty banks of the river and the expanse of morning sky. Something familiar and dreadful.

Paul began to feel nauseous and had to close the magazine. Samantha watched with surprise. “What’s the matter, Scott?”

“I don’t want to look at this,” he said, trying to fight off a dizzy spell.

“Why not?” she pressed.

“... I don’t feel well.” He tried to leave, but she wouldn’t let him.

“Tell me why you don’t feel well. Is it the photograph?” She opened the magazine and showed him the photo again. “What is it? Show me what’s making you feel sick.”

Paul closed his eyes. It was as if he was being punched in the stomach. He started to double over with the phantom pain. He opened his eyes and said stiffly, “I don’t want to look at that.” He left.

Samantha looked for him when she read the first installment of _The Wizard of Oz_ to a group of residents, but to her disappointment he didn’t show up. During their meeting the next morning, she tried bringing up the magazine incident, but he would not talk about it. He did join the _Wizard_ group that next night, however. But no matter how often she brought up the magazine, he would not discuss it. She filed the incident away.

******

Three days later, Mr. Sweeney was back from the hospital, and he and Paul had a lot of checkers- playing to catch up on. They were in the middle of a marathon session when Pickens, one of the other residents, came into the recreation room and turned on the TV set to professional wrestling. Paul was immediately distracted from his game by the sight of the violence, even as staged as it was. He frowned, watching as one team was ganging up on a single member of another, one man holding the opponent while the other sent a flurry of resounding-looking blows to the opponent’s face. Paul knew he didn’t want to watch that. He pointed at the TV set and turned it off. Pickens reacted with surprise, then angrily got up and turned the TV set on again. But before he had settled back into his chair, Paul had turned the set off.

Mr. Sweeney watched and gave Paul a knowing look. “He isn’t going to like that.”

Pickens turned the set on again, but once again Paul turned it off. Pickens turned and glared at them. “Did you do that?”

“I don’t like the violence,” was Paul’s reply.

Pickens fumed. “You don’t like violence! I’ll show you some violence!”

He headed for Paul, but the shouting had attracted two attendants, who escorted Pickens away as he complained to them that it was Paul’s fault. Paul and Mr. Sweeney quietly finished their game of checkers.

The next morning during their meeting, Samantha asked Paul about the incident. “Obviously the TV’s on the blink,” she said. “But you didn’t need to get him upset like that.”

“I didn’t want to watch it,” he said, “so I turned it off.”

She frowned at him, then consulted her notes. “Did you get up and push the off button?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“You turned it off from where you were sitting,” she said flatly. He nodded. “But it’s not a remote control TV set.”

“Define remote control.”

She shook her head. “You couldn’t have turned the TV set off from across the room.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not that kind of TV set.”

“But I did.”

No amount of discussion could change his story. She sent him on his way and stewed on this. She was stuck between her knowledge that there was no way he could have done this and her growing feeling that Paul wasn’t as entirely devoid of marbles as she had originally thought. Most of the time he seemed so normal, if a bit confused by details of everyday life. She would be almost ready to treat him as if he were a normal person who had simply lost his memory. But then he would come up with this spaceman stuff and send her fledging faith into a tailspin.

She called in Mr. Sweeney, even though his appointment wasn’t until later. She queried him about the incident, and he calmly reported the events, including the subject matter Paul objected to and his gesture which obviously turned the TV set off. When she tried to reassure Mr. Sweeney that this wasn’t possible, he chastised her: “You keep forgetting he’s from outer space, Miss Eppler.” She sent him out and wondered how she was going to write this one up.

That night, as she was giving the night attendant, Mike Francis, his instructions, the incident was still with her.

“Mike, are you still part of that computer network?”

“GovNet? Yeah.”

“Could you do me a favor?” she said, playing thoughtfully with her neck chain. “I know you go in there to play, but could you please keep an eye out for stuff about healers, and psychics, and telekinetic people? This Scott Heyden’s really doing a number on my brain.”

“Sure. I’ve never seen much on that. People just mostly complain about paperwork and ask for advice. But I’ll keep an eye out for you.”

“Thanks,” she said and tried not to think about it anymore.

******

Scott found ways to avoid Dick without being obvious about it, and within two weeks Dick had turned 18. Right on cue, he dropped out of school and out of sight. Scott got into a quiet rhythm of life: School and home, school and home. He made amends with Ken, who had in fact turned his broken nose into something of a trophy, and Scott was incorporated back into the Video Club.

November left, and December came in with snow flurries and a quickening pace heading for Christmas. Scott had his hundred dollars for the filing, and he was torn between keeping it with the rest of his savings and spending at least some of it on presents for the Keitzers. He owed them so much. Many an evening after he’d done his homework, he talked with Kurt and Irmtraud, coaxing from them stories about his mother and human father. More than once Kurt had commented on how much Scott looked like the senior Scott Hayden. Scott was truly getting a sense of his family, which was more than he could ever have hoped for in what he had at first thought was just a place to hide out. He wanted to repay them somehow. However, they anticipated his thoughts and insisted he not buy them presents. Mary Hayden had sent them a check earlier in the month, ostensibly repaying a debt, but they all knew it was to help cover Scott’s living expenses.

Scott saw less and less of Evan. It was obvious he and Stephanie had turned into quite an item, and the Keitzers couldn’t have been happier. They had the two over for dinner in early December, and Evan reported that they were going to Madison to meet her parents the weekend before Christmas. They were going Christmas shopping in Madison that Friday, and Evan invited Scott along. Scott declined, and he had to insist when Evan tried to talk him into it.

******

Three days before Christmas, Scott was in the spirit. School was out, and six inches of snow during the night had transformed the countryside into the setting for a Christmas card.

Scott had known for a while that the Keitzers were looking for a dog, but they hadn’t wanted any of the strays from the Dog Bust. They were looking for a German Shepherd. The Hansons, some neighbors down the road, had a litter of Shepherds and Scott had worked out a deal with them that he would do chores at their farm in return for one of the puppies. It was all very secret, and he had to hide his amusement when Irmtraud called them to see if she could have one of the puppies and the Hansons said sadly that “they were all taken.” He would pick up the puppy on Christmas Eve and give it to them then. He could hardly wait to see their faces.

He was walking home from the Hansons late in the afternoon when he heard a powerful engine winding down the road behind him. He stepped aside, but the car stopped beside him. It was red and black and loaded with muscle.

“Hey, Scott!”

Scott looked into the car and reacted with surprise. “Dick!”

Dick hadn’t changed, except he was dressed a little better. “Hop in! I’ll take you for a ride.”

Scott was tempted. It was quite a car. Then he remembered what Evan had said, and he shook his head. “I have to get back by dark.”

“No problem. I promise to get you back in time.”

The car’s motor purred its siren song, beckoning Scott. Well, he thought, one little trip down the road couldn’t hurt. “You promise?”

“Guaranteed. I’ll have you home in half an hour.”

That was enough for Scott. He jumped in, and the car surged away.

The interior was astounding. Custom everything, complete with megastereo, radar detector and even a CB with autoscan. Without thinking about it, Scott noticed the CB was on and turned to a police band he had seen Evan use.

“Great wheels, man. Where’d you get it?”

Dick shrugged. “The big city, little man!” He laughed. “I been in Milwaukee mostly, sometimes Chicago. The land of opportunity.”

“You must be doing great to afford something like this,” Scott said, still in awe.

“I told you I’d do okay once I left this Nazi haven. Little town, little minds.”

The radio crackled on. “County One, this is County Two, over.”

The radio scanned to the return signal. “This is One, over.” Scott recognized Evan’s voice.

“Negative up here.”

“Ten-four. Continue east on K.”

“Ten-four. Two out.”

Dick smirked. “Wrong way, José.”

Scott got a feeling of dread, but before he could say something, the radio crackled on again. “County Three, over.”

“This is One.”

“We had two reports of the vehicle moving north past the old dairy and then cutting back down Marshall’s Road. Over.” Dick frowned at the news.

“I think I know where he’s going,” Evan said. “Keep on him. One out.”

“Three out.”

Scott’s stomach sank. This was Marshall’s Road. “They’re looking for you!” he shouted. Dick shrugged innocently. “Is this car stolen?”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Dick said.

“Let me out of the car right now!”

“Sorry, you’re in for the ride now.”

Scott was frantic. He had to get out of there.

The radio went on again. “Rockland County One, this is State Patrol Relay One, over.”

“Rockland County One, over.”

“We’ve set up a road block on Highway 18 two miles west of K, over.”

“Ten-four. We’ve got him heading east towards County H, so he ought to be popping up anytime. We’ve got H northbound blocked, so he’ll be heading back towards 18. We’ve set up near the 40-mile marker.”

“Ten-four, Rockland One. Let us know what you want us to do.”

“Just hold tight,” was Evan’s reply. “We’ll have him by dinnertime.”

Dick angrily slammed the car into overdrive. “Oh, yeah?”

The car roared down the winding road, past the Keitzers’ driveway and several snow-covered cornfields. Dick yanked on the steering wheel with a vengeance and sent the car careening onto County H, heading south. Dick punched open the glove compartment and pulled out at .357 Magnum. Scott stared in disbelief, and Dick tucked the gun under his belt, patting it for luck.

“Don’t do this, man,” Scott said, trying to sound calm.

“Shut up.” Dick pushed the car past 90.

“You’re going to get us killed!”

“Shut up!”

After two more twists and turns, the car zoomed up over a crest, leaving the ground for a moment and hitting the pavement with a deep bounce. Visible a mile ahead on the next crest was a snarl of patrol cars, their blue lights flashing. They were wedged between two rock walls where the road engineers had taken the road through a small hill instead of around it. There would be no way to get past the roadblock. Dick gritted his teeth and strengthened his grip on the wheel.

“Turn around, man!” Scott shouted. “You can’t get through!”

Dick said nothing, his jaw set and his eyes locked on the roadblock ahead.

Scott’s blood ran cold. He suddenly realized what was happening. Dick didn’t want to get away anymore. This joy ride had just turned into a kamikaze run.

In another 30 seconds they would be there. Scott suddenly felt a strange calm. He took out his sphere. Dick saw it and laughed. “Yeah, man! Make us fly!” Scott connected with it, then looked at Dick’s gun. The gun began to glow, and then suddenly Dick yelped in pain and tossed the sizzling weapon on the floor. “Hey, what are you doing?” Scott pushed the gun out of reach with his feet as the weapon began to cool.

The roadblock was straight ahead. The road was wall-to-wall cars. He could see deputies begin to scatter as Dick pushed the pedal to the floor. His sphere glowing brightly, Scott looked at the engine.

As the car was accelerating past 120, the motor clicked off. A stunned Dick, suddenly finding he was without power steering, had to struggle with the wheel. The car coasted to a stop 20 feet from the first row of patrol cars as deputies with their guns drawn headed for them. In a flash, Scott’s sphere was in his pocket and he was out of the car.

Dick was screaming bloody murder as the deputies descended on him. “Why’d you do that! You turned on me!”

“You’re crazy!” Scott shouted as he backed away from the car. The deputies pulled Dick from behind the wheel and wrestled him face down on the pavement. A deputy came up to Scott abruptly, but recognized him and went to join the others dealing with Dick. Evan appeared beside Scott, put a hand on his arm, and then walked around the car to where Dick was still wailing as he was being handcuffed. He stood over the thrashing figure.

“You have the right to remain silent,” he said firmly.

“I’m going to kill you!” Dick screamed.

“If you choose not to remain silent, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

“I’m going to kill you!” Dick was now totally out of control. Two deputies had to sit on him to keep him down as they put the manacles on him.

“You have the right to an attorney,” Evan said. “If you want one but cannot afford one, a lawyer will be provided to you. Do you understand these rights as I have explained them to you?”

Dick was screaming like a maniac. Evan stepped away, and the two deputies, plus two others, managed to get Dick carted off to a waiting patrol car. Evan signaled one of the deputies, then said to him, “Read him his rights again when he calms down.” The deputy nodded and left. Evan walked over to Scott, who was now beginning to feel the impact of what had almost happened. Evan put a calming hand on Scott’s trembling shoulder. “You okay?” he said quietly. Scott nodded. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“I was walking home from the Hansons’, and he came along, and I ... I knew I shouldn’t have gotten in, but it was such a nice car, and ...” He tried to get his breathing under control.

“What happened to the car just now?”

“I turned the ignition off.”

Evan raised an eyebrow. “Smart thinking.”

“There’s a gun,” Scott said, pointing at the car. Evan nodded. Scott looked at him. “You knew he had a radio, didn’t you?” Evan nodded again. “You told him where you were, because you knew he’d come after you.” Evan nodded. Scott looked at him. This man was a formidable opponent, and, as Kelly had warned, he was impossible to predict. A bolt of fear shuddered down Scott’s spine.

The patrol car rolled away past them, and they could hear Dick’s fevered cries, “I’m going to get you!”

Scott had the sinking feeling that Dick meant him as well. He looked at the car, fearing he had set in motion something he could no longer stop.

******

Scott barely slept that night. He got up at four a.m. and packed, then unpacked. He went back to bed, but couldn’t sleep. He packed again and tucked the bag under his bed before getting back under the covers. The Keitzers had thought his agitation at dinner was a delayed reaction from the car chase. But it wasn’t. Scott had made an enemy of someone who could hurt him. Would Dick turn on him? Probably. The real question was, would anyone believe Dick?

Scott spent a restless day. He told the Keitzers at breakfast that he might have to leave in a hurry if Dick tried to drag him into some trouble. The couple promised to do what they could, but they couldn’t dare call Evan to chat about the case for fear he might already be suspicious.

He went to the Hansons’ as usual, but he wasn’t really paying attention. Only one more day, and then he would have earned that puppy for the Keitzers. He played with the puppy before he left. It was a little rascal, and liked to chew playfully on Scott’s hand. Scott doubted that he would be able to stay around to watch the puppy grow up. He put it back into the pen with the others, and he felt a strange foreboding when he latched the door shut. The puppy whimpered at him and scratched on the door, begging to get out. Scott shuddered. He only partly heard Mrs. Hanson’s promise to have a big green bow for the dog’s collar tomorrow.

******

Evan came out of the cell area pensively and sat down next to Kelly.

“What?” she said.

He looked at her desk, deep in troubled thought. “I promised myself I wouldn’t let that kid get to me.” He shook his head. “But he’s saying a lot of things that tie in with bizarre stuff that’s been going on, and aside from the fact that he’s talking nonsense, he’s making a lot of sense.”

Kelly pondered that one for a moment. “What’s he saying?”

Evan sighed. “He just spent the last hour telling me that Scott Hunter made him do all this because Scott is ... some sort of ... mutant.”

Her eyes widened. “Mutant?”

“Well, I don’t know how else to put it. He said Scott has this metal thing that looks like a ball bearing, but he can do things with it, like mind projection stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?”

Evan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, he said, Scott used this thing to make his gun red hot. He even showed me.” Evan patted his stomach. “He’s got first degree burns on his stomach right where a gun would be stuck under his belt. Well, it looks like a burn. But it could be an abrasion. He also said Scott used this thing to turn off the car.” Evan rubbed his face tiredly. “What does Scott’s statement say about that?”

Kelly shuffled some papers and produced the one in question. “‘I turned the ignition off.’“

“It doesn’t say what he did with the keys, whether he just turned them or pulled them out?”

“No. And as a matter of fact, I wondered about that later, because when I did the car last night, I noticed it’s a real custom job. The ignition isn’t on the right side of the steering wheel like in most cars. It’s over on the left part of the dash.” They looked at each other. “Scott would have had to reach around the wheel to get at it.” She shrugged. “It’s possible.”

“But that’s not all Dick said. He said Scott had done blue fireworks with this thing, and he once reassembled some beer bottles.”

“Yeah, well, one New Year’s Mark swears he saw me walk on the ceiling.”

“But, you know, we got a couple of calls in October about someone shooting off blue fireworks near the Keitzers’ farm.”

It was her turn to let out a deep breath. “It’s not impossible.”

Evan shook his head slightly. “And he said Scott took credit for blowing the door off the dog trailer and for getting all the dogs to come back.” Kelly thought about this for a moment. “Kelly, Scott being there for any of that never made it in the paper. The only way for Dick to have found out about that is if he either talked with us, which is very unlikely, or he talked with Scott.” They sat in silent thought for a while.

“So what are you going to do?” she asked.

“I’d like you to get into the state data bank and look for something weird.”

“Like what?”

“Well, blue fireworks, strange teenage boys, whatever you can find.” He thought for a moment. “You know, something else stuck in my mind. Steph and I were going shopping in Madison and we invited Scott along, and he didn’t want to go. He got really firm about it. I mean, can you imagine a teenager in this place not wanting to go to Madison?”

“So,” she said, writing, “‘blue fireworks, Madison, mutant teenagers.’ Anything else?”

He twitched his eyebrows at her. “Your devious brain comes in handy sometimes. Be creative. Remember,” he said as he got up slowly, “the taxpayers are counting on you.”

******

The next day dawned cold and gray, and Scott was up early to watch a few snowflakes drift down in the morning light. He knew he should just leave. Not take any chances. Tell the Keitzers about the puppy, and then get on a bus for anywhere far away. But there was something holding him here. Was it fear? Hope that it would all blow over? Mary’s instructions which brought him here in the first place?

He began to run over every suspicious thing he’d done and wondered how he could have been so stupid. Evan probably could have found another way to stop Curtis Elliot. And the whole thing of showing off to Dick -- Scott didn’t even want to admit he’d done that. He had long since decided that he could never drink alcohol again, even when he was the legal age. He couldn’t risk it. Heck, he couldn’t even handle a few swallows.

That was just one more of the similarities with his father that he seemed to be finding every day. In a way it was comforting. It was as if his father was with him all the time, even when they were apart. All he had to do was calm his emotions and he could usually figure out what his father would do in any particular situation.

But he couldn’t just be his father. He had been thinking about that a lot lately. He was himself, too, in addition to whatever his father had given him. All of the emotions and wild ideas and crazy energy, they were him, too. He had wondered if Scott Hayden had been like that, but he realized it didn’t matter. Sometimes he had felt bad that he wasn’t just like his father, so calm, and perceptive and, well, innocent. But he wasn’t his father. His father was an intergalactic being whose home was among the stars. Scott knew he wasn’t and never could be. He could never go to where his father was from. He was flesh and blood, he belonged here. For all his Earthly failings, he couldn’t deny that part of himself. But he didn’t need to. He had nothing to be ashamed of, or to want to get rid of. He was a human being, and it seemed to him that he was a pretty good one. He just had a little extra.

He took out his sphere. All night he had been searching, and even thought he hadn’t seen anything substantial he knew his father was alive. But where was he? Scott’s head was saying take off and look, but his heart said wait, it’s not time yet. Scott wanted it to be time. It was getting about as close to the wire as you could get.

Scott stayed close to the house all day. Kurt and Irmtraud canceled plans to go to the midnight Christmas Eve Mass, just in case they had to be around to drive Scott to safety. They baked cookies, and Kurt found a radio station playing Christmas carols. Irmtraud enlisted Scott’s help in starting work on the big Christmas dinner tomorrow. Evan and Stephanie were coming over. Scott thought that might be a really interesting afternoon if Evan was investigating him. Well, no sense in worrying about that now. Tomorrow, maybe, but not now. He’d also worked out a plan to get Kurt and Irmtraud to drive him over to the Hansons’ late that afternoon to get the puppy. He’d tell them he’d left something there, and he didn’t want to leave it if he had to make a quick getaway. Why hadn’t he thought about that before? Carrying a wriggling puppy two miles on a snowy road at twilight didn’t make much sense. He smiled to himself as he sprinkled powdered sugar on the cookies. This was turning out to be okay.

******

The shelter house was decorated for Christmas Eve with homemade ornaments and garlands, and a leftover tree donated by a lot stood in the corner of the recreation room. The attention lavished on the decor almost obscured the shabbiness of the place.

Caroling was scheduled for that night, and everyone had gathered in the rec room to rehearse. Mike Francis was trying to play something on the battered old piano which had been rescued from the dump, but the music it produced was less than musical. During an enthusiastic chorus of “Good King Wenceslas” they heard a horrible, resounding crack and the piano was silenced. Everyone gathered around, and after an examination of the piano’s insides Mike announced with dismay that the sounding board had cracked, rendering the piano virtually unplayable. Disappointed, the residents turned away.

Samantha made a timely entrance with her supply of magazines, and the piano was temporarily forgotten. She also made a well-received announcement that she had rented a VCR and the film version of _The Wizard of Oz_ for a special Christmas Eve showing after dinner.

Paul and Mr. Sweeney sat down with their choice of the magazines. Paul began to page through the magazine he’d picked up without looking to see what it was. Then he stopped on a photo page and looked at one of the images for a long time. He knew it. He knew it well.

Samantha saw this and made her way over, trying not to confront him this time. She sat across from him. “What is it, Scott?”

He pointed at the image with a frown. “I took this picture.”

She tilted her head and looked at it. It was a photo of men with small tanker trucks at a riverbank doing something that looked like dumping the truck’s contents into the river. He turned the page. Along with text, there were two photos, one a closeup of one of the dumpers and the other a photo of several men being led away by police. Paul pointed at the closeup shot. “I took that one, too.”

She indicated the other. “Did you take this one?”

He shook his head.

“Well, don’t magazines tend to use one photographer per story?” She picked up the magazine and turned it sideways to look at the photo credits. “Oh, look, they did use two.” She glanced at Paul. “Do you know the name Steve Nielson?”

“No.”

“Do you know the name Paul Forrester?”

Yes, he did. But from where? He searched his mind, and she saw his reaction.

“Is your name Paul Forrester?” she asked.

He thought some more. Of course that wasn’t his name, but why did it sound so familiar?

She turned the next page, then gasped. She quickly flipped the publication around for him to see. On the obverse page was a boxed and shaded sidebar and in the middle was a photo of that face in the mirror. “Look!” she said. “It’s you!”

He looked at the picture hard. Yes, that was definitely the face from the mirror. Well, not quite. “Oh,” he said, recognizing the image, “no, that’s the real Paul Forrester.” He stopped abruptly, knowing somehow that he shouldn’t be saying things like that.

But Samantha was too excited to pay attention to semantics. She poured over the article and read key parts aloud. “Two Pulitzers ... one other nomination ... a book of collected photos ... wounded in Vietnam ... wounded in Northern Ireland ... helicopter crash -- boy, you sure live dangerously!”

Paul blinked. The helicopter crash! Yes! He remembered that! There was that body. It was just right. The man was dead, so ... In fits and starts, all of it began to come back to him. Liz Baynes. Fox. Looking for Jenny Hayden. Scott! How had he gotten separated from Scott?

Samantha read further, then nodded with a professional smile. “Do you remember the river?”

Paul said nothing, the jangling memories still swirling through his head.

“Do you remember the two men who beat you up?”

Paul stood up abruptly with a gasp.

“It’s okay, Paul,” she said, “you’re safe here.” He looked at her, terror in his eyes. “They’re not going to hurt you. It says right here they’re in jail awaiting trial. They can’t hurt you.”

Paul remembered it now, every agonizing detail. They were going to kill him. He had never encountered such hatred. And he had been totally helpless. Memories of the fear made him woozy. He had to sit down.

Samantha regarded him gently. “Everyone thinks you’re dead.”

Everyone was almost right, he thought.

She turned to the front of the magazine. She found the masthead and went to the phone in her office, signaling Paul to follow. She dialed. “I bet they’ll be glad to know you’re alive and kicking.” 

Paul looked at his feet quizzically as she heard something on the phone, then frowned. She waited a moment, then said, “Hello, and Merry Christmas! I’m sorry you won’t get this message until after Christmas because do I have a present for you! Paul Forrester’s alive! He’s been living here in a shelter house in Sampson Springs, Oregon, suffering from amnesia. But he saw your article and he’s beginning to remember. I think he’s going to be all right.” She laughed. “What a great ending for your story!” She concluded the message with her name and phone number. She looked up at Paul brightly after she hung up. “How’s that for a stocking stuffer?”

He wondered about that one for a moment, and she took his puzzled look to mean more. “Oh, gosh, sit down. I shouldn’t be getting you all worked up. It’s coming back in bits and pieces, isn’t it? That can be kind of frightening. You just rest. Go to your room and take a nap if you want. Would you like something to help you sleep?”

“No, thank you. Now that I know who I am, can I leave?”

“No,” Samantha said, a little surprised. “Dr. Cosgrove has to check you out. She’ll be back on the 28th.”

“But my son,” Paul said earnestly. “I have to find him. I don’t know where he is.”

“Paul, I’m sorry, I understand. But I’m sure he’s fine. And a few more days won’t make much difference.” She tapped her pencil on the desk. “Tell you what -- I’ll call the police here and ask them to start looking for him --”

“No,” he said emphatically. A few more pieces had fallen into place, especially regarding the police.

“You don’t want me to call the police?” she asked pointedly.

“No. It’s ... a complicated story. But I have to find him on my own. Please.”

“But you’re a missing person. I have to at least let them know you’re here. You’re a material witness, or something like that, back in Nebraska. They need to talk with you. Don’t you want to make sure the men who beat you up go to prison?”

“I want to find my son.”

She rubbed her face. He wasn’t making this easy for her. “Let me think it over for a little bit, okay? Let’s talk about this after dinner.”

But Paul knew he had to keep her from calling the police until he could get out of there. So he would avoid her after dinner by pretending to sleep. When that no longer worked, he would find another way to stall. He had to.

******

“Evan, you’re not going to like this.”

Kelly sat down opposite Evan’s desk after closing his office door.

He already didn’t like this. He was planning on leaving. He’d been stuck in meetings all day and had only just now gotten out of the last one. He hadn’t bought Stephanie’s present yet, let alone wrapped any of the others. The stores in town were already closing for the holiday. But there was something in Kelly’s voice that kept him planted in his chair.

“I’ve been having a field day in the state data bank,” she said. “Everybody’s home stuffing turkeys and I’ve had the thing to myself. I’ve never had such a good turnaround time.”

“The point?” he said impatiently.

“Well, mutant teenagers didn’t turn up much. Too many of them, I guess. But blue fireworks and Madison sure set off a few bells.” Evan leaned in. “I found a brief story in the Journal dated last October 12th about a wild boat chase on Lake Mendota. Two teenage boys in an old inboard outran a police speedboat because, according to no less than three witnesses, one of the boys ‘stopped the speedboat dead in the water with a strange blue light.’“ Evan stared at her. “In the story, the police had no comment and referred all inquiries to the FSA.”

“The FSA?” he said with disbelief.

She nodded. “They of course had no comment. They never do. So I called Ernie Maxwell over at MPD and he told me to call a George Fox at the FSA. So I did. This Fox almost went into hysterics when I told him about our strange events. He said he was looking for a father and son and it was all federal business and we didn’t need to know any details, but he said their names were Paul Forrester and -- and I say this with great reservation because I know it’s going to set off a chain reaction in your head that might make it fall off -- Scott _Hayden_.”

He stared at her as indeed a very powerful chain reaction of realizations roared through his brain. She watched him as it ran its course and he sank into a mix of depression, disappointment, betrayal, and rage.

“Want me to go on?” she asked quietly. He nodded. “He made a big stink about Scott being here for two months without us knowing who he was and not keeping up on all our circulars, so I checked the files. Nothing. But then, who just did all of our backfiling for us?”

Evan simmered a little deeper.

“So it turned out this Mr. Fox was having his calls forwarded and he’s in Chicago, and he’s flying to Madison, getting a car, and heading here. He said he’d meet us -- or you -- or me, if you want -- at the Keitzers’ about four o’clock.”

Evan looked at the clock on his desk. It was just past three. He kept staring at the face of the clock. He was getting dizzy. This couldn’t be happening. They couldn’t have done this to him. Right in his face. For two months. He’d even been trying to figure out how to get Scott a driver’s license. He was terribly hurt. And he was furious.

“I’ll go,” was all he said evenly.

“Want backup?” she asked quietly.

He shook his head.

“I’m running a crosscheck on this George Fox, just to satisfy my own curiosity. Want me to call you if I get something?”

He nodded. He stood up a little unsteadily, then steeled himself. He was going to need every last bit of strength he had.

******

Scott was lying on the floor between Kurt and Irmtraud’s chairs at the fireside, the puppy standing on his face and chewing his hair, when they heard the car pull up. Kurt turned and looked out the window. “It’s Evan,” he said and went to open the door. Scott nudged the puppy aside and got up.

Evan came in with a blast of cold air. But the three shivered in a chill that ran much deeper as Evan glared at Scott.

“Scott Hayden,” he said stonily.

Scott flinched in spite of himself, but Evan didn’t react. “Get your coat.” Evan turned to the old couple and pointed at them fiercely. “I’m going to assume you two don’t know who he is, although I know damn well you do.”

Scott took a step back towards the closet, wondering if he could get his jacket and then run out the back door. But he knew Evan must already know every hiding place on the farm better than he did.

Evan turned to Scott bitterly. “Did you toss all the flyers on you and your dad?”

“I filed them under the wrong thing.”

Evan was cutting Scott in two with his gaze, and Scott had to look away. “Get your coat,” he repeated.

Kurt stepped up between Evan and Scott and put a firm hand on Evan’s chest. “We will not let you take this boy.”

Scott reacted with surprise and Evan was trying to hide his hurt behind official anger. “You don’t have any choice in the matter.”

“We will not let you take him,” he repeated. Irmtraud stepped up beside her husband and looked at Evan resolutely. Kurt said firmly, “If there is nothing else you have learned from us, I hope you have learned that sometimes there is a difference between what the law says to do and what is right.”

“Get out of my way,” he said, trying to keep his resolve.

“No,” Irmtraud said. “If you would like to knock me to the ground, you may. But I will not get out of the way.”

“Look, it will go a lot better for you if he’s in my custody when the feds get here.”

“Feds!” Scott burst out. “Fox?”

Evan looked at him. “Yes, George Fox. He ought to be here in about, ...” he looked at his watch, “... ten minutes.”

“Did you talk to him? Does he have my father?”

Evan frowned. “He said he was looking for you and your father.”

“Oh, thank God,” Scott exclaimed. “Look, Evan, you don’t understand. You don’t know what he’s --”

“I understand you’ve been lying to me since the first day I met you.” He looked at Kurt and Irmtraud, betraying more than a trace of hurt. “All of you.”

“We had to, Evan,” Kurt said gently. “We know you are a man of duty and honor. If we had told you this boy was sent to us with ‘orange blossoms,’ you would have been forced to find out why.”

“Orange blossoms,” he said with a bitter laugh.

“She sent him to us for a reason,” Irmtraud said, “even knowing you are our ... son.”

Evan suddenly was overtaken by emotion, but he managed to force it back inside. “Don’t. That’s not fair.”

“She has entrusted us with the life of her grandson,” Irmtraud continued. “To take care of this boy has been a great honor for us. We owe her our lives.”

“And so do you, I think,” Kurt added firmly. “If we had not been here, where would you have lived when your mother could no longer take care of you?”

The second blow made him cringe as he fought back tears. He covered his face and growled. “No! Stop it!” He stuffed his emotions back in and shook his finger at them. “Don’t make me choose between you and my job!”

“You must already do this, I think,” Kurt said.

Evan looked at Scott with resolve. “Scott, get your coat.”

“Look,” Scott said agitatedly, “you don’t know what Fox is going to do to me.” He looked at Kurt and Irmtraud. “I didn’t tell you the whole story. ... I couldn’t.” They turned to look at him, and he rubbed his face. He had no idea where to begin. “You see, Jenny Hayden’s my mom, and I look like Scott Hayden, ... but he’s not really my dad. I mean, he is. But only sort of.”

“How can it be ‘sort of?’“ Kurt asked.

“I mean, he is, I look like him. You said that. But I was born more than a year after he died. And they didn’t have test tube stuff then.”

Kurt frowned. “Are you saying you were extra long in the womb? Or your father was a ghost?”

“No. I’m saying my father, my real father ...,” Scott winced, “... cloned a body from some of Scott Hayden’s hair.”

Evan frowned at him. Irmtraud looked at the men questioningly. “ _Wie heist das ‘clone’?_ ”

Evan continued his disapproving gaze at Scott. “It means to build a whole body from a couple cells.” Irmtraud looked at Scott with amazement.

“I know it’s hard to believe,” Scott said. “I didn’t believe it at first, either.”

Evan was squinting at Scott. “And why would Paul Forrester need to clone somebody’s body?”

“Paul Forrester isn’t my dad.”

“I see.”

“My dad ... cloned Paul Forrester’s body ... so he could ...,” Scott winced again, “... live on this planet.”

They were all frowning at him.

“Well, why else do you think George Fox and the FSA are after us?”

“Could it have something to do with being dangerous lunatics?” Evan asked.

“My dad really is from another planet.” He pulled out his sphere and stepped over to Evan, staying just behind Kurt, and handed Evan the sphere. “What do you think this is?”

Evan took it and weighed it in his hand. “A lightweight ball bearing.” Scott held out his hand to take it back, but Evan held it just out of his reach. “Is this what you used to stop the car?”

“Mm-hhm.”

“And blow the trailer door?”

“Mm-hhm.”

“And call the dogs back?”

“Mm-hhm.”

“And make it snow?”

Scott looked at him quizzically.

Evan shrugged. “Just checking.” He held out the sphere to him, but then pulled it back slightly. “You’re not going to blast me with this, are you?”

“No.”

After another moment of thinking about it, Evan gave Scott his sphere.

“You want to see how this works?” They all simply looked at him. “Ask me to do something.” He shrugged. “And maybe I can do it.”

“Turn on the Christmas tree lights,” Irmtraud said quietly.

Scott looked at the tree, then connected with his sphere. The three reacted with surprise, and Scott turned to look at the tree. After a false start, the tree lights came on. And then the light in the creche on the television set came on. And then the TV came on. And then the front porch light came on. And then all the lights in the room came on, then the lights in the dining room, kitchen, and up the stairs. Scott disconnected and frowned. “I’m still not very good at this.”

They were staring at him, and Irmtraud looked quite frightened.

“Look, I know what you’re thinking. But I’m not a monster. I’m just a kid.” He shrugged. “Who can do a few extra things. I’m not going to hurt anyone. You know me.” He looked at them. They didn’t know him anymore. “I mean, I wasn’t born in Alpha Centauri. I was born in Madison.”

“There are a lot of alien life forms there,” Evan said flatly.

“Look,” Scott said to the Keitzers, “Mary knows everything. Would she have sent me to stay with you if I was a threat to the planet?”

“How do we know she knows?” Kurt asked seriously.

“Why else would she have sent me with ‘orange blossoms’? I mean, she knew my mom couldn’t have kids.” He looked at the old couple. “You knew my mom. All the doctors said she couldn’t have kids. And then there was this strange meteor, and she disappeared for a few days, and then she had me.” He looked at them pleadingly. “You know all that, don’t you?”

“Look, Scott,” Evan said, trying to wrap this up, “I’m having real trouble believing this.”

“And most people have trouble believing in ghosts,” Scott said pointedly. Evan squinted with a disapproving frown. “You don’t know what Fox is going to do to me.” He looked at Evan. “Did you talk to him?”

“Kelly did.”

“I bet he didn’t tell her why they want us. Or what they’re going to do to us. There’s an Air Force base in Arizona

\-- Peagrum Air Force Base -- they study UFOs there. They’ve got a secret lab. Building 11. I’ve been in there.” Scott’s agitation was beginning to turn from frustration to anger. “We were prisoners in there. I was in a little glass coffin. I was strapped down, with needles in my arms, and electrodes on my body. They used to take blood samples every hour. Poke me here, prod me there. You think those dogs going off to the experimental lab had it bad. They last maybe three, four years. If Fox gets me, I’m looking at 50 or 60 years. In a cage. Blood samples every hour. Wired to machines for the rest of my life.” He looked at them emphatically. “I’m a human being. I can’t live like that. When Fox gets here, I’m going to run, and you’re going to have to shoot me. And I hope your aim is good, because I’m not going to spend the rest of my life ...” He choked on the rest.

Evan was looking at him seriously, thinking. “That movie you got so upset about _Hangar 18_.”

Scott looked at him sullenly. “Yeah.”

“I even found out what it was and watched it to see what set you off.”

“Now you know.”

Evan looked at him, then scratched the back of his head in thought. “Oh, brother. I need a few minutes to think about this.”

The roar of the car screeching to a stop by the front door jarred them all. Evan turned and looked at the headlights through the door’s window, then at Kurt and Irmtraud. Time stopped for a moment. 

He looked at Scott, then grabbed Scott’s arm with resolve. But instead of pulling him towards the front door, he threw open the closet door with his free hand, pushed Scott into the closet, slammed the door shut and went to open the front door.

Fox had his hand up to knock and looked at Evan with surprise. “Sheriff Pierce?”

“Yes.”

“George Fox, Federal Security Agency. Your deputy called me.”

“Yes. Come in.”

“Where’s the boy?” Fox bustled in as another man followed from the car.

Evan looked at Fox, and the Keitzers held their breath, not sure now if they wanted him to turn Scott in or not. “He is here, isn’t he?”

Evan looked at Kurt and Irmtraud, then turned to Fox seriously. “I suggest you move your car into the barn. If he comes in, the way these valleys are around here, he’ll be able to see it half a mile away.”

Fox signaled the man, who left to follow Evan’s suggestion. “Sheriff, do you have any idea where he is?”

“There are a number of likely places,” he said in a helpful, official voice. “Do you have a map of the county?”

“In the car,” Fox said. “I’ll have my man get it. Do you have people out looking for him?”

Evan gave Fox a helpful look. “Considering how quickly you would be here, and knowing how you federal people are about local interference, I decided to wait and let you run the show.”

Fox wasn’t sure he liked that, but accepted it. He looked at the Keitzers, who had not yet recovered from the earlier revelations. “Where is he? Where is Scott Hayden?”

They said nothing, not sure what to say. Fox frowned. The other man came back from moving the car, and Fox sent him back out for the map. Fox took out a pen and paper and started writing a list of instructions.

“Mr. Fox,” Evan said tentatively with a glance at the closet door, “what do you want Scott for?”

“That’s federal business,” Fox said brusquely, not looking up.

“I got to know him pretty well. He seems like a nice kid --”

“-- Appearances can be deceiving, Sheriff.”

“You know,” Evan said, easing in, “there have been a lot of strange occurrences around here since Scott arrived, and there have been a couple theories about that.”

Without looking up, Fox smiled his smug, official smile as he wrote.

“Theories about flying saucers,” Evan said, watching Fox carefully. Fox only smiled his smug smile again as he continued his writing. “Does Scott have something to do with that?” Fox smiled again without looking up, raising his eyebrow with disdain. “What would you do with someone like that, Mr. Fox?”

Fox glanced up as he flipped his paper over. “No comment.” He wrote some more.

“It seems to me, Mr. Fox --”

“It seems to me, Sheriff,” Fox said sharply, cutting him off, “that you should be on the phone right now getting your deputies on the road looking for him.”

The phone rang. Fox looked at it significantly, then signaled Kurt to answer it. Kurt did, then handed the receiver to Evan. “It’s Kelly.”

“My deputy,” Evan said to Fox and took the receiver. “Yeah?”

“Evan, how’s it going?” Kelly said quietly.

“It isn’t. What have you got?”

“I thought you’d like to know I struck pay dirt on George Fox. It seems he was in Madison 17 years ago after some big meteor crashed up near Ashland. At least they said it was a meteor. There was a whole series of articles in the Times about some secret Army lab being set up at Truax Field. There was still a lot of anti-war stuff going on, so of course the Army took some heat. But then a reporter found out there was a vivisection lab in there, and all hell broke loose. Then the lab suddenly disappeared. There were rumors that it went somewhere, like they were chasing somebody with it. Fox was in charge of the whole thing. He even made some comforting remarks about an alien running around.”

Evan was looking at Fox. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. I called Ernie Maxwell to see if he remembered this guy, and he said Fox was back in Madison this October, and -- you’ll love this -- he was hassling the Hayden family. Very unsuccessfully, I might add.”

“Kelly, the taxpayers will be proud of you.”

“Anything else?”

“Go give Dick a candy cane and go home. Merry Christmas.” Evan replaced the receiver.

“Well?” Fox said.

“That was Kelly Anderson, the deputy who called you. She had some information on you, actually.” Evan glanced at Kurt and Irmtraud. “She said you were in Madison 17 years ago, chasing an alien with a vivisection lab.”

Kurt and Irmtraud reacted significantly while Fox frowned. “Can we stick to the matters at hand, if you don’t mind?” Fox’s assistant had come in during the phone call, and Fox turned to him with his list. “I want full surveillance on this house, the line tapped, all the bus stations and hitchhiking spots watched.” He pointed out towards the car. “Go use the radio. Hayden might try to call --”

“ _Gott in Himmel!_ ” Irmtraud’s face had suddenly lit up with shock. She turned to her husband. “Kurt,” she said in German, “I remember! Mary said there would be no namesake in the family because Jenny was barren, but then she had the baby!” She looked breathlessly at Evan, and then her husband. “... Scott was telling the truth.”

Fox looked at Evan anxiously. “What did she say?”

Evan looked at her, then shook his head at Fox. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fox, I’m not German. Irmi,” he said in his official tones, “what did you say?”

She glowered fiercely at Fox. “Mr. Fox, it seems you have been chasing this boy since before he was born. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“And you have been harboring a fugitive for two months,” Fox said, almost losing his cool. The assistant was still standing by, and Fox signaled for him to go. He left for the car as Fox took a breath in a vain effort to calm himself. “I did some research on you two on my way here. I know all about how you worked for Mary Hayden during the war. You knew exactly who Scott Hayden was.”

“Yes,” Kurt said pointedly, “and we also knew who the Allied flyers were. And we kept them away from people like you.”

That did it. “Look!” Fox shouted as he shook his finger at the couple. “I’m tired of all you old geriatric cases play-acting World War II fantasies at my expense!” He turned to Evan. “Sheriff, I want these two arrested for obstruction of justice, harboring a fugitive, and interfering with a federal officer!” He marched to the closet and threw open the door and grabbed an overcoat as he shouted at Evan. “I want them in jail _now!_ ”

The Keitzers recoiled with horror. Just beyond Fox’s emphatic glare at them they could see Scott, peering out from behind the coat rack.

Evan stepped forward and calmly took the coat from Fox, putting it back and closing the closet door. “Mr. Fox, I don’t think taking them in is the best thing. After all, if Scott comes back and their car is here but they’re not, he’ll know something is up and bolt. Besides, Kurt has been having back trouble lately, and we don’t have facilities to take care of someone of his advanced years.” Kurt took the cue and put his hand on his lower back just as Fox looked at him. “Might I suggest as an alternative that we put them under house arrest. I’ll have someone here 24 hours a day. I’ll even take the first shift.” He leaned in to Fox confidentially. “Let’s face it, they’re pushing 80. They’re not going anywhere.”

Fox fumed, but nodded. “All right. But they can’t leave the house.” Evan nodded dutifully.

“I’m sure you’ll want to set up headquarters in our offices,” Evan said. “I’ll call the deputy on duty to have whatever you need ready for you.”

Fox was calming down, and he gave Evan a laundry list of what he wanted.

As Evan escorted Fox to the door, he said, “I know you’ll probably be putting a tap on the line soon. If Scott isn’t home by dinnertime, then we can be sure he’s suspicious, so he probably won’t call. I’ve got my laptop computer in the car, so after about seven or so I’m going to be doing some modem work to see if I can track something down.”

“You’ll let me know whatever you get?” Fox said in the doorway.

“Of course,” Evan nodded. Fox stepped out into the cold night. Evan called to him, then shrugged. “Merry Christmas.” Fox nodded noncommittally, then got into the waiting car.

The three inside the house watched the car drive off, and then Evan turned back into the room, rolled his eyes, shook his head, and sank against the door. He buried his face in his hands and started groaning loudly. “I can’t believe I did that!”

Irmtraud laughed with delight. “You were wonderful, you silly!”

Kurt called, “Scott, come out! Come, come!”

Scott came out and saw Irmtraud and Kurt pulling Evan away from the door. He looked at Kurt. “I thought you said you wouldn’t help me if I got caught.”

Kurt shrugged. “I changed my mind.”

“Well,” Evan said, an arm around each of the Keitzers, “if I’m going to go out, I might as well do it big.”

Irmtraud tapped him proudly on the chest. “Now we know you are our son.”

He laughed lightly and blinked away some mistiness. “You know what this means. Now you have to leave me your farm so when I get out of prison I can make a living.”

Kurt blinked. “We are already doing this.”

Evan was surprised. “Really?”

“To whom else should we give it?” Kurt asked. “Ted maybe?” They laughed.

******

Christmas Eve dinner at the Keitzers’ was probably one of the stranger ones on record. While the others ate sandwiches and Christmas cookies, Evan set up his laptop computer and logged onto GovNet.

“It will be a real Christmas miracle if anyone’s on here tonight,” he said as he typed in his question: “Does anyone out there have any information on persons named Paul Forrester and Scott Hayden?”

After a few false leads, a message flashed across the screen: “Is the Paul Forrester you’re looking for a photographer?”

“Yes!” Scott shouted, nearly spitting out his bite of sandwich. He was glued to Evan’s shoulder as Evan typed the answer. The message came back: “This is Mike Francis of the Sampson Springs, Ore. Shelter House. He’s a resident here. We picked him up as a John Doe two months ago in Crater Lake. Get this -- he claimed he was from another planet.”

“How do you have ID now?” Evan typed.

“He’s beginning to remember, and he identified two pictures he took in a magazine.”

Evan looked at Scott. “We need something definitive. Was there something unusual about the way he was dressed or had his hair cut?”

“Yes. He was wearing a camouflage jacket and a green plaid flannel shirt, and the front part of his shirt had been ripped off on a square angle.”

Evan typed: “Please describe his clothing when you found him.”

There was a pause, then the response came back: “Moderate weight camouflage-style cloth jacket, jeans, green plaid flannel shirt with left front lower section torn away. Who is inquiring?”

Evan sat back and thought for a long moment. He typed: “Repeat message: transmission garbled.”

“Who is inquiring?”

Evan hesitated, grimaced, then typed, “Repeat: electrical storm in area is breaking up transmizzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz” and then abruptly disconnected the modem. He grimaced. “Not very clever, but, ...”

“What if Fox traces that back to you?” Scott asked.

“The tap on the line won’t be able to pick up this kind of transmission, and the only phone number he’ll get is the network’s. But if he investigates on their end and traces it back, well, ...” He frowned and looked at Scott. “How good are you at whipping up thunderstorms in the wintertime?”

Scott held up his hands to protest. “I don’t do weather.”

The plan was for Evan to secrete Scott away in the trunk of his patrol car when the relief watch came on at 10 p.m., so Scott was to be in place by 9:30 in case the deputy showed up early. Evan shook his head. “It’s me against my own deputies.”

“You have done this before,” Irmtraud said quietly.

“That was different,” he replied. “I was nuts. Now I’m just crazy.”

The Keitzers gave Scott his Christmas present. It was a pocket watch like Kurt’s that Scott had admired so often. “This is so you will always be on time -- if you use it,” he explained.

Scott was getting ready for his vigil in the trunk when Evan came up to Kurt and put his hand on his shoulder. “I want you to send Mary Hayden a message for me. Tell her next time she pulls something like this, keep you two out of it. The next sheriff probably won’t be so ... independently-minded.”

Kurt laughed. “She is a good judge of character, yes?”

Evan rolled his eyes. “She’s frightening!”

Irmtraud met Scott at the front door as he was ready to go. She smiled sweetly and blinked away some welling tears. “I think perhaps it is very good you are leaving tonight. Because, you see, there was another baby, whose birthday is tomorrow, and his father wasn’t really his father, too. And there was a man, who I think was very much like Mr. Fox, who wanted to harm this baby.” A tear lightly skimmed down her cheek. “But he got away. And so will you.” She hugged him, and then Kurt came up beside her.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Scott said. “I never would have made it without you.”

“You find your father and be safe,” Kurt said as he put his arm around his wife. “That is our thanks.”

Scott turned to go out the door, and Irmtraud laughed. “And when you reach your Switzerland, you send us some chocolates!”

Evan firmly blanketed Scott into his waiting spot in the patrol car’s trunk, and he was there no more than five minutes when he heard a car drive up. Another ten minutes went by, and then he heard footfalls up to the car, felt someone get in, and then the car drove away.

******

Scott stayed in the trunk the whole way to Evan’s place, just in case anyone saw him. Evan backed the patrol car up to his garage. He opened the garage door, opened the back of the Cherokee, then opened the trunk and Scott made the quick transfer. In five minutes, Evan had changed into civilian clothes and they were on their way.

“I have to change cars,” he said back to Scott as Scott peered out from his hiding place under several blankets. “My car’s too well known. Keep your fingers crossed.”

They drove for a while, and then the Cherokee turned up a gravel road. A minute later the car stopped, and Evan got out. Scott peered out through the back window. They were at Stephanie’s cabin. Evan knocked on the door, waited, then knocked again. “Steph, it’s me.”

The door opened and a sleepy Stephanie appeared. She smiled at him. “Hi. What happened?”

He smiled at her innocently. “Hi. Can I borrow your car?”

She blinked awake at that. She looked at his car. “What’s wrong with yours?”

He repeated his innocent smile. “Can I borrow your car?”

“What for?”

He hedged. “It’s a secret.”

“Why is it a secret?”

He hedged again. “Because I don’t want to tell you.”

“Why not?”

“Because if I tell you, that would make you an accessory.”

She blinked again. “Wrong holiday, Evan. This is Santa Claus, not Trick or Treat.”

He tried the innocent smile again. “Can I borrow your car?”

She crossed her arms. “Not until you tell me.”

He hesitated, then gave up. “Scott!”

Scott got out of his hiding place and joined them. She stared at him. “Are we playing Santa and Rudolph or something?”

“Look,” Evan said, “I need to drive Scott to Dubuque tonight and my car’s a little too visible, so I wanted to borrow yours.”

She looked at them with concern. “Why?”

“It’s just one of those things,” Evan fudged.

Scott nudged his arm. “Can I tell you about a personal experience I had with keeping the truth from somebody I liked and then having to live with it?”

Evan regarded him for a long moment, then nodded. “I think I know the name of that tune.” He looked at her. “Scott’s in trouble, and I have to get him out of here.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Why are you so nosy?” he said with annoyed frown.

“Because I’m like that,” she said, mimicking his frown. “Why are you helping him skip town? Am I a little confused here, or aren’t you the law around these parts?”

“The law sometimes works in mysterious ways.”

After a moment, she said, “Okay, Sheriff, you can borrow my car _if_ you can answer this question to my satisfaction: Would Marshall Dillon do this?”

Evan thought a moment, then smiled. “No. But Captain Kirk would.”

She regarded the two. “Does the Federation know what you and Mr. Spock are up to?”

Evan looked at Scott, then started to laugh. Stephanie watched, waiting for a satisfactory answer, and Scott tried not to look embarrassed.

When Evan finally stopped laughing, he and Stephanie wrangled a bit longer, and finally she agreed to loan her car -- on the condition that she drive. Evan was dead set against it, but as she put it, “I got the keys and you got no choice.”

Evan put his portable police scanner in the car while Stephanie got dressed, and they left. The roads were quiet and clear, but they were met with light snow flurries near the Mississippi River.

They pulled into Dubuque, and Evan had Stephanie stop on a quiet side street a few blocks from the bus station. Scott said goodbye to Stephanie, and he and Evan got out of the Jimmy and stepped onto the main street.

“Thanks,” Scott said, bundling up against the wind.

Evan pulled up his collar, then reached into his pocket. “Oh, here’s your present. I didn’t have time to wrap it.” He handed Scott a Swiss Army knife.

“Wow, thanks. I’m sorry, I didn’t get you anything.”

“Well, I don’t know. Hearing Kurt and Irmi call me their son kinda did a lot for me.” He blinked and looked away. Then he remembered something and pulled out his wallet. “Here,” he said and gave Scott about a hundred dollars. “It’s a loan,” he said firmly. “And remember, I promised Mr. Fox I’d tell him what I got on the computer network. I’m giving you a three-day head start, and then I tell him. At noon on the 28th. After that, you’re on your own.” Scott nodded. “Okay. So, I guess it’s goodbye.” He gave Scott a scolding glance. “Stay out of trouble or I’ll put your butt in a sling so fast you’ll have scorch marks on your tush. _Verstehen?_ ”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. The bus stop is down two blocks, then over one,” he said, pointing to the right. You got everything?”

Scott looked at his bags. “Yeah. Thanks, Evan. I owe you a lot.”

“Yeah, well, if worse comes to worse, maybe we can get adjoining cells.”

Scott smiled, then headed down the street into the swirling flurries.

Evan watched him go, but his skin began to crawl. He looked over to a side street on the right where out of the corner of his eye he thought he had seen movement in a parked car. He looked at Scott, who was walking with his head tucked in against the wind. There was that movement again. There was somebody in that car. The car began to move forward into the street, its headlights off.

“Scott!”

Scott stopped and looked back at Evan, his back to the approaching car. The car was moving in quietly. Evan muttered an expletive under his breath. “Run!” He took off after Scott at a dead run as Scott turned and saw the car for the first time. The car’s headlights came on and the engine roared in the crisp night air. Scott took off down a cross street to the left, and Evan caught him by the collar a few feet ahead of the car, pulling him away between a couple of buildings. They heard the Jimmy peel out behind them, but there was no time to worry about anything except getting away from the gaining first car. Another car engine roared in the distance to the left as the first car’s brakes squealed as it tried to swing into the alley behind them, but the car spun noisily on the flurry-slick pavement as the driver aborted the pursuit into the narrow passage.

Evan and Scott dashed down the corridor between the buildings, then slipped across the next street and ran between two more buildings, scrambling over a low fence. They could hear the first car’s screaming tires as it made a sharp turn to their left, and another car seemed to be heading straight for them on the right somewhere. They were almost safely across a second street when a sedan came out of nowhere on the right. Their pursuers closing in, they cut through back yards and down a dark alley between silent buildings.

As they raced through the darkness, Evan didn’t see the pile of bricks against the alley wall. He caught it just below the knee and fell, slamming hard on the pavement. Scott helped him up, but Evan could barely walk. They ducked out of the alley and hid in the shadows back by a loading dock.

“Did you break it?” Scott asked.

“I don’t think so.” Evan cursed under his breath. “I didn’t need this.” He tried to rub his leg, but the pain was too much. He stopped to catch his breath. But they both stopped breathing for a moment as a sedan roared down the alley in front of them. It kept going, and they looked at each other. Evan asked in a hoarse whisper, “Can you fix my leg with that thing of yours?”

Scott shook his head. “Not really.”

Evan listened to the sounds of the cars out on the streets. There were no more squealing tires of pursuit, but the urgent engines could be heard all around them. “They know they’ve lost us. They’re probably setting up a standard search pattern right now.” He looked at Scott. “You get out of here. Just run. I can distract them and --”

“I can’t leave you here.”

“You’ve got to.”

“I can’t.”

“What you’ve got to lose is a lot bigger than what I’ve got to lose,” Evan said seriously.

Scott knew he was right, and hesitated for a moment. Then that up-against-the-wall confidence welled inside him. “No. There’s another way.”

Scott stood up, his sphere in hand. He connected with it, and as it began to glow, Scott was enveloped in a blue glow. Evan stared as the glow coalesced and became a second Scott Hayden, which stepped away from the original. The blue around the figure faded, and an exact duplicate stood silent and immobile before them, waiting. Scott turned to Evan and helped him stand. Soon Evan was surrounded by the same shimmering blue. After a moment, to Evan’s amazement, another figure seemed to step out of him. The clothes were the same, but when the figure turned and Evan saw the face, it was no one he had ever seen before. Evan fought off a shudder as Scott, his sphere still glowing, looked at the two phantoms intently and the Paul-duplicate put his hand on the Scott-duplicate’s shoulder and they took off running down to the alley and then ran off to the right. Scott closed his hand over the still-glowing sphere and put Evan’s arm over his shoulder. “Come on.” Scott helped him walk to the mouth of the alley. They looked to the right, where they could see the duplicate images pausing out on the street. Squealing tires broke the stillness, and Scott held his glowing sphere a little tighter as the phantoms ran across the street into the shadows. Scott’s sphere fell silent, and the decoys faded. The two watched a sedan pick up the chase, heading to cut off the route the decoys seemed to be taking. Scott and Evan hurried down the alley in the opposite direction.

Within five minutes, Scott and Evan were out of the area and moving up a hill past quiet houses. Evan was beginning to recover and was able to walk on his own, and they were making tracks. They stopped at a vantage point so Evan could rest his leg for a moment, and they watched the search below. Evan and Scott could see the cars frantically careening around in vain pursuit of the vanished decoys, heading further and further away.

Evan looked at Scott. “That was your father, wasn’t it? I mean, his image.” Scott nodded. He continued to regard the teenager. “You could have come up with just about anything to get them off us, couldn’t you? Like blow up a building, or blast a couple of cars. Couldn’t you?”

“I guess so.”

Evan smiled slightly at Scott. “You’re some kid.” He looked around at the night. “Well, we have to figure out what happened to Stephanie. I just hope they haven’t collared her. Can you find her with --”

The sound of a car quietly approaching behind them caught their ears and they ducked behind an evergreen hedge. Evan peeked through the branches, then muttered, “I don’t believe it.” He stepped out into view and waved. Scott stepped out and saw Stephanie’s Jimmy coming towards them. Within moments, the two fugitives were in the car and they were heading for the edge of town.

Evan looked at Stephanie in amazement. “I don’t know how you did that. How did you do that?”

She smiled at him triumphantly. “Are you kidding? I interned in Chicago. I can do “anything”!” She laughed as they moved quickly past the sleeping houses. “These are great little items,” she said, patting the CB scanner. “I followed the whole chase from the moment you two took off. They had you, they lost you, then suddenly they had you again -- but in a very visible manner. I figured you two were pulling a 180. All I had to do was cruise around in the opposite direction of the chase and you’d spot me eventually.”

“You are amazing,” Evan said sincerely.

She smiled. “I know.” He shifted his injured leg and flinched. He rolled up his pants leg, revealing a bruise of epic proportions. She frowned. “What did you do?”

He shook his head. “Don’t ask.”

“He gave better than he got,” Scott offered from the back seat.

Evan frowned. “Yeah, it’ll be a long time before those bricks get up and walk around again.” He rolled the pants leg back down. He turned his attention to the scanner. The chase was continuing in town, and a lot of aggravation was being shared over the radio about losing them again -- the “them” being Paul and Scott. Evan leaned back and rubbed his face tiredly. “This sure isn’t what I had in mind for Christmas Eve. Committing five felonies and two misdemeanors, turning my girlfriend into a criminal, dropkicking my career through the goal posts of oblivion, and maiming myself to boot.” He sighed. “ _Wenn ich das gewust hätte, wäre ich nicht mitgekommen._ ”

“What?” Both Scott and Stephanie did double takes.

“Oh, it’s a line from a movie. It means, ‘If I’d known what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have come along.’”

“Wait a minute,” Scott said. “Back at the house, you specifically didn’t lie to Fox. But you told him you didn’t speak German.”

“No,” Evan said, “I said I wasn’t German. Of course I speak German. I lived with the Keitzers for three years.”

“What a stinker!” Stephanie said with a laugh.

Evan explained, “I didn’t have money for college and my grades weren’t good enough for a scholarship, and I was definitely 1-A. So I figured if my number came up and I spoke German, maybe they’d send me to Germany instead of Vietnam.”

“What happened?” Stephanie asked.

He frowned at her. “I already told you.”

She checked herself. “That’s right. That’s where you got that scar.”

“What scar?” Scott asked.

They turned to him in unison: “Never mind.”

She smiled at Evan. “Well, _kimo sabe_ , where next?”

He thought for a moment, then said brightly, “I hear Des Moines is lovely this time of year.”

******

Evan and Stephanie woke Scott up as they arrived before dawn at a truck stop outside Des Moines. He had folded the back seats down and curled up under some blankets, lulled by their quiet conversation and the humming of the snow tires on the highway. The last thing he had remembered was Evan filling her in -- on everything except the alien business -- and “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” playing quietly on the car’s radio.

They settled into a booth at the busy truck stop. “The radio’s been clear since we left Dubuque,” Evan said. “They were concentrating the search between Dubuque and Madison. We ought to be okay.”

The waitress, who had tinsel and Christmas ornaments in her hair, brought coffee and coffeecake. “Merry Christmas from the management and from me,” she said cheerily.

“Merry Christmas,” they all responded.

“You folks traveling to visit family?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Evan said with a tired smile and sipped some coffee.

They ordered hearty breakfasts and settled in. “So now what?” Stephanie asked.

Scott shrugged. “I get on a bus and go to Oregon.”

She shook her head. “I still can’t believe your father is Paul Forrester. You’re such a nice kid. Were you adopted?” He and Evan exchanged a knowing look. “How long will it take you to get there?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe two or three days.”

“I’m a little worried about that,” Evan said. “Fox knows you’re on the move. At least for the moment he thinks you’re already with your father. But if he finds out where your father really is, you could still be two days away and he’ll be waiting for you to show up.”

Stephanie smiled. She gave Evan a shooing gesture. “Let me out.” She got out of the booth and went out to the car, where she pulled something out of the visor on the driver’s side. She came back in and settled into the booth. “I knew there was a reason I had to come along.” She looked at Evan significantly. “You will learn to trust my instincts.” She handed a piece of paper to Scott. “Merry Christmas.”

He looked at it, then looked at her in shock. “It’s an airline coupon!”

“I got bumped last year, so they gave me a coupon for a free flight.”

Evan looked at her. “You are amazing.”

She smiled. “I know.”

“But you can’t --” Scott stammered.

“Look, it expires on the 31st. I thought I was just going to end up throwing it out. I’d much rather give it to you.”

“Wait a minute,” Evan said sharply. “You keep something like that in your car? That’s valuable.”

“I needed to keep it handy,” she explained. “I never know when I’m going to have to dash off to some exotic location. Like Des Moines.”

Scott couldn’t believe this. “Thank you.”

Stephanie went off to phone the airline for reservations, and as breakfast was arriving she returned with good news. “You’re all set. You’re on the 6 a.m. flight for Portland, with connections to Sampson Springs, getting there about 10:30 local time. I just have to go to the check in with you to sign the coupon over.”

Evan nodded at Scott. “I like this woman.” He looked at Scott seriously. “Since you’re flying, I’m going to have to move up the timetable on telling Fox. I’m going to go into the office at 2 p.m. Central Time, that’s noon Pacific Time. So you better not waste a second on the other end. Got it?” Scott nodded and pulled out his new pocket watch. “You better set that on Oregon time now so you don’t forget.” Scott did.

They ate, and it seemed to Scott food had never tasted so good. The waitress came by and saw Scott chowing down. She nodded approvingly. “Keep being a good eater and you’ll fill out big and strong like your dad,” she said, indicating Evan. She went on her way, and they all smiled together.

“Well, son,” Evan said in orotund, fatherly tones, “as you embark on your own life, let me just impart on you some words of wisdom my father once shared with me: ‘As you’re going through your life,/ Whatever be your goal,/ Keep your eye upon the doughnut/ And not upon the hole.’”

They all cracked up. Giddy from too little sleep and leftover adrenalin, they couldn’t stop laughing. They finally let up out of sheer exhaustion.

Stephanie looked at Evan askance as she caught her breath. “You know, mister, you have a real talent for mayhem, which is kind of a surprise, considering your career track.”

He let out a sigh. “Well, I’m probably a little too tired to decide this now, but I think this career track is coming to an end here.”

The two looked at him with surprise. “Are you serious?” Stephanie said.

“Well, yeah. I can’t be sheriff anymore, not after this. Besides, it’ll give me more time to help you with your book.” He held her hand and kissed it with a sly smile. “I can be your prison pen pal coauthor.”

She squinted at him. “‘Pen’ pal?”

Scott smiled and said to Stephanie, “I’m sorry I can’t be in your book. I hope you get the peg.”

“Well, don’t worry about it.” She patted Evan on the arm. “Your dad and I’ll work it out.” Suddenly a light bulb went off over her head. She looked back and forth between the two men with astonishment and then delight.

“What?” Evan said.

“Never mind,” she said, suddenly coy.

“What?” he insisted.

She shook her head. “I just may have gotten the peg for my book.”

“What is it?” Scott asked.

“Let me work on it a little bit first,” she said reluctantly.

Evan rolled his eyes at Scott and shook his head. He looked at his watch, then at Stephanie tiredly. “Shall we take Junior to the airport?”

“Whatever you say, dear. Let’s send him back to his old man and be rid of him.”

They were at the airport within 20 minutes, and Evan said goodbye -- the second time -- at the car, just in case there were people on the lookout for a man and a boy. Stephanie walked with Scott through the terminal.

“Scott, I just wanted to say thank you. I saw what happened in that little scene when I came into the sheriff’s office the first time. I don’t know what it is you said to him, but I know he wouldn’t have talked to me if you hadn’t said it. So thank you.”

They passed by a security guard, and out of the corner of his eye Scott saw the guard give him a once-over, but then he looked at Stephanie and looked away. Scott knew he wasn’t out of the woods by a long shot.

They stopped in the check in line, and Scott turned to her. “So, you have to tell me. What’s the peg of your book?”

She smiled, then laughed. “Well, it kind of depends on Evan. What I’d like to do is have short bios of the people with their photos, one per page. One section would be my friends, and the other section would be his friends. And the whole thing would show how friendships and family networks work and how people come together and live their lives together in that sort of chain, because it would be kind of ...,” she gave him a coy, hopeful look, “... a wedding album.” Scott laughed with surprise, and she laughed with him. She shrugged nervously. “This could be a real interesting trip back.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said with a smile. “Hey, you could trade telling him that for him telling you about the ghost.”

She smiled knowingly. “He already told me.”

“The whole thing?”

She nodded, the smile intact.

“Well, what is it? Tell me.”

She wrinkled her nose in thought. “Nah, it’s a little too weird.”

“Believe me,” he said eagerly, “I can handle weird.”

She wasn’t convinced. “Maybe he’ll tell you later. Next time you come through. No, the trip back is reserved for him telling me the rest of your story.”

Scott smiled. “Yeah, it’s going to be an interesting trip.” He pulled the sphere out of his pocket and held it up for her to look at. “Remember, this is what he’s talking about, and he’s not making any of it up.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Okay, I’ll remember.”

Stephanie checked him onto the plane as her son, Scott Dufay, and there was no problem with signing the coupon over to him. With a last hug and thanks, she went back and he went to his gate.

******

Christmas morning found the shelter house full of high spirits. No one wanted to wait until after breakfast to open presents, so Samantha relented. She gave Mr. Sweeney the honor-filled job of passing out the presents under the tree. Socks and underwear, cassette tapes, sweaters, books, puzzles, and -- everyone’s favorite -- cookies were unwrapped and passed around to admire or to share. Each of the attendants had given the residents a small gift, and Samantha had given each a five-dollar gift certificate from the local bookstore and a promise to deliver the resident’s book of choice -- within reason, of course. They were all very impressed and thanked her profusely. Mr. Sweeney came to her with tears in his eyes and said, “Thanks, Miss Eppler. Now I can use my new brain like a real person!”

Touched, Samantha blinked a few times and regarded the celebration. Paul had been watching and came up to her with a smile. “Now you see how it works,” he said. “You don’t make a difference with these people with money. You make the difference with your heart.”

She laughed and couldn’t keep tears from glistening on her eyelashes. “I guess this is kind of like _The Wizard of Oz_. Mr. Sweeney gets a new brain, and I get a new heart, and you get to go home. All we need is a Cowardly Lion to get some courage, and we’ll be all set.”

Mr. Sweeney perked up. “And Toto, too!”

Samantha laughed. “And Toto, too.”

“You could be that lion,” Paul said quietly. “You could let me go.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Paul. I can’t. Dr. Cosgrove is the only one who can do that, and she won’t be back until the 28th. I could call her, and maybe she could send someone else to sign the papers tomorrow.”

The phone rang, and Pete, the attendant, answered it. Samantha remembered something. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Mike got an inquiry about you last night on his computer network, but the connection was cut off by bad weather. Hey, we never called the police, did we?”

Pete called Samantha and told her the call was for her, and she took it in her office. She laughed when she heard who it was and called Paul over. She held the receiver to him with a smile. Paul took it cautiously. “Hello?”

“My God, it is you!” Kevin McMahon roared. “I was afraid the message was another crank call! How the hell are you? Where the hell have you been? Wait, I already know that. What the hell happened!?”

“I lived,” Paul replied.

“Well, thank God for that! Look, I want you to know I’m really sorry about what happened. I sent Binnie your money. She’s holding on to it for you, or for Scott if you hadn’t made it. It’s all there, plus a bonus, I guess to ease my conscience. And I looked everywhere for Scott, I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is. And tell me, Forrester, what the hell did you do to get the feds on your case?”

“Feds?” Paul said.

“Yeah, some little maniac was running around here like a bloodhound who’d lost the scent and was making all of us even more nuts than we already were.”

“When?”

“The day after you disappeared.”

“Oh. Good.”

“What did you do? You can tell me. Did you bust open some secret scam they were doing?”

“Secret, yes.”

“Well, you better hightail it out of there, amigo. That man wants you in the worst way. Don’t worry about coming back. The goons who attacked you copped a plea to nail their bosses, who all turned on each other and the whole thing’s over. Do you believe that? It took me a year to set this thing up, and it all came down in less than a month. So much for being able to savor the victory. Hey, can I quote you with Mark Twain’s bit on your obit?”

“What?” Paul had forgotten how confusing Kevin could be.

“You know, ‘The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.’“

“Whatever you want. You’re the editor.”

Kevin laughed. “Natch. Godspeed, my friend. And call me when the heat’s off.”

Paul hung up the phone. He didn’t know why, but he knew he had to get out of there as soon as possible.

******

Evan came into the Rockland County Sheriff’s office just before 2 p.m. He was wearing the closest thing he had to a suit and looking remarkably rested for having had only two hours of sleep. Thanks to Stephanie’s ice pack, his limp was nearly gone. His mind was on getting his official duty to Fox out of the way and then getting over to the Keitzers for Christmas dinner with Stephanie to tell them about her offer that he couldn’t refuse.

Kelly reacted with predictable awe at his appearance as he came in.

“I thought Calvin was on today,” Evan said.

She shook her head. “He’s got a bug.”

Evan looked around. “Where’s Mr. Fox?”

“He got a phone call this morning. Apparently he had a tap on a phone line of some magazine in Omaha. He took off.”

Evan didn’t like the sound of this. “Where did he go?”

“Somewhere in Oregon,” she said. Evan shuddered as Kelly looked at her watch. “He should be there about now.”

******

Scott’s connecting flight to Sampson Springs had been delayed by engine trouble, and he was trying not to go crazy as he checked his pocket watch every five minutes. By the time they boarded the little commuter plane, it was nearly noon. Scott sat at the front of the 14-passenger plane, and the cockpit door was open so he could hear snatches of conversation and the preflight run-through. The plane was full, but the door wasn’t closed. The flight attendant came forward and stuck her head into the cockpit.

“What’s going on? Why can’t I close up?”

“Some passenger at the gate’s making a fuss,” the co-pilot muttered. “He says some passenger should be bumped so he can get on. He says it’s a national emergency or something.”

The flight attendant shook her head. “Don’t they always say that?”

Scott looked out the window to the terminal. Over at the door which led out to the planes he could see an argument in progress as an airline employee was politely but firmly keeping a man from the door. The man stepped into view. Scott gasped. It was Fox, flashing his badge. Scott ducked out of sight and looked around to find an emergency exit in case Fox got on the plane.

“Sorry about the delay,” the captain said over the intercom, “but we have a little problem at the gate. Is there anyone who would be willing to give up their seat for another passenger? This would be strictly voluntary and the airline would not compensate you in any way.” Scott looked back at the passengers. Aside from him, the contingent seemed to consist of a single traveling party of two large families of a distinctly “old hippie” persuasion. Family members looked at each other with “Well?” looks. Scott heard someone come up the steps at the plane’s back entrance, but something told him not to look around.

“Please!” Fox’s voice cut sharply into the low-key crowd. Scott sank quickly out of sight. “Would someone be willing to give up their seat?” He flashed some money. “I’ll pay a hundred dollars.”

Sitting next to Scott was a man who looked like a graying refugee from the ‘60s, complete with long gray hair, long gray beard and leather headband. He was apparently the senior member of the traveling party. He looked at Scott’s skulking pose and then looked back at Fox. “What’s the deal, man?”

“Look, it’s a national emergency. I have to get to Sampson Springs right away.” Fox pulled out another handful of money. “A hundred fifty dollars. Surely someone here could use a hundred fifty dollars.”

The others were looking at the old hippie, and he glanced at Scott. Scott shook his head slightly, pleading. The old hippie winked at him and looked at Fox. “Hey, man, I’ve heard all that national emergency crap before. It’s Christmas. This is a family thing, ya know? Get off the plane, Berford.”

Fox looked at them, agitated but defeated. He left, and the others cheered. Even the flight attendant and co-pilot were smiling. The old hippie winked a second time at Scott, who was starting to breathe again.

Scott saw the co-pilot nod. “Finally,” he said and signaled the flight attendant. She closed the cockpit door and went back and closed the passenger door, beginning her preflight instructions to the passengers as the plane taxied away from the terminal.

When she was done and walked down the aisle with a last check to make sure everyone had their seat belts fastened, Scott asked her innocently, “Excuse me, but when is the next flight to Sampson Springs after this one?”

She smiled. “Twenty minutes. He won’t have long to wait.”

Scott nodded feebly as she went on with her work.

The old hippie smiled at Scott. “I haven’t had that much fun in ten years. Can I give you a ride when we hit town?”

******

Scott arrived at the Sampson Springs Shelter House in a brightly-colored contraption that once had been a VW bus. As the vehicle waited, sputtering unevenly at the curb, Scott turned to the old hippie at the wheel. “Five minutes.” The man nodded and drove away. Scott turned and walked quickly up to the house. There on the door were the steel bars he had seen that night in his search for his father. He swallowed hard as he reached the door. The bars looked even stronger in real life. He rang the buzzer.

After a moment, the door opened in independently of the bars, which still blocked the way. Pete the attendant appeared in the doorway. “What do you want?”

“I’m here for my dad, Paul Forrester.”

“Scott!” Paul’s voice came from inside.

“Dad!” Scott looked inside eagerly.

Paul appeared behind Pete and the father and son joyously embraced each other as best they could through the bars.

“Dad, we have to get out of here. Fox will be here any minute.”

“Scott, I lost my sphere. Let me use yours.”

Scott laughed proudly. “I got your sphere! And your wallet. But this one’s on me.”

“Wait a minute,” Pete said. “You’re not going anywhere until Miss Eppler gets back.”

The other residents had gathered behind Pete and Paul to see what was going on. Scott stepped back away from the steel doors. He pulled out his sphere and connected with it, to the amazement of the spectators. Scott squinted at the heavy lock on the bar door. After a moment, there was a series of loud clicks and the door gently swung open. Paul smiled proudly at his son as he stepped outside past the stupefied attendant. “Very good! You’ve been practicing.”

But Scott was frowning. “I wanted it to blow off.”

“Showing off isn’t necessary,” Paul said quietly.

Mr. Sweeney was grinning ear-to-ear in the doorway. “He’s my friend!” he proclaimed to the others.

“Scott,” Paul said, “this is Mr. Sweeney. This is my son, Scott.”

“Very nice to meet you,” Mr. Sweeney said.

Scott nodded to Mr. Sweeney, but he wouldn’t be pulled off the point. “Dad, Fox is coming. We have to get out of here.”

“How soon will he be here?”

“I’m about 20 minutes ahead of him.”

“Give me my sphere.” Scott handed his father his sphere. “There’s something I have to do first.” He stepped back into the house, to Scott’s dismay.

“Dad!” But Paul was gone. Scott darted in after him. By the time he had caught up with him in the rec room, Paul had already connected with his sphere and was moving through the room. He stood before the piano as it became enveloped in a blue light. The others had followed, including Pete, and they were staring in awe. The broken old piano suddenly perked up, the broken keys mending and the chips and scrapes healing. Paul moved on, leaving the piano looking as if it had just been delivered from the factory.

Paul stopped at the TV set. Pickens, who had been blocking out all of the commotion in favor of a football game, reacted with anger as the TV set developed a blue glow.

“Hey, what are you doing?” he shouted.

But Paul did not respond, concentrating on the job at hand. The TV picture suddenly burst forth in brilliant color, to the amazement of Pickens and the applause of the gallery. The dented knobs straightened, the flimsy wires strengthened. Paul turned to the room. The flaking paint began to glow, then the drapes, then the floor, and they all in their turn were transformed into their new and pristine selves.

Within five minutes, Paul had marched through the house, repairing, replacing, renovating. When he was finally satisfied, he heeded Scott’s pleas and went out with him through the front door. Most of the residents were gathered around the new-again piano as a dazed and amazed Pete was playing Christmas carols, but Mr. Sweeney followed them to the front porch.

“Thanks,” he said, his eyes aglow. “You made this the best Christmas ever.”

“Take care of yourself, Mr. Sweeney.”

“Goodbye,” Mr. Sweeney said to Scott and walked back through the door, closing the barred door and then the inside door behind him.

Paul and Scott walked down towards the street, where the psychedelic bus was back and waiting for them. But Paul stopped when he saw Samantha walking towards them on the sidewalk. She was carrying a large bag filled with evergreen trimmings, and she was deep in thought but smiling to herself. Scott tugged on his father’s sleeve, but Paul would not be swayed. “Samantha.”

She looked up at him with surprise. “Well, I see you got out. Care to explain how you did it?”

Paul smiled proudly and put his hand on Scott’s shoulder. “My son.”

She looked at Scott with an ironic smile. “You don’t look strong enough to bend back the bars.”

The old hippie stuck his head out of the bus. “Hey, kid, didn’t you say the fuzz was coming? We gotta get outa here.”

“Dad, come on,” Scott said urgently. Paul turned to go with him, but then remembered something he had forgotten to do and turned back. He took out his sphere and looked at the house.

“Oh,” she said with a chuckle. “That’s that magic sphere you used to talk ...” The words died in her throat as the sphere began to glow. Paul concentrated on the house, and swirls of blue light began to encircle it above the roof. They traveled down around the building, the exterior becoming bright and new as the swirls passed. Both Samantha and the old hippie were staring, their mouths open. In less than a minute, the battered old house looked brand new.

The old hippie blinked a few times and rubbed his eyes, looking at the sight again to make sure he really saw it. “Wow, I gotta give up the light stuff, too.”

Paul put his sphere away. Samantha was staring at him, but she wasn’t afraid. “You’re not Dorothy,” she said with a faint, appreciative smile. “You’re the Wizard. A traveler with a pocketful of miracles.” She looked at the bus and laughed. “And here’s your balloon taking you back to Kansas. Do you have to go?”

“Yes.”

“Will you come back to visit?”

“No.”

She smiled wistfully, then impulsively kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For reminding me of who I am.” She looked at the house. “And who they are.”

Paul looked at her and smiled. Without saying a word, he pulled back the open collar of her coat and exposed the ever-present heavy silver chain. She shivered as he reached behind her neck and unlatched it, then held it out for her to hold in her hand. Wondering what he was up to, she held the chain in front of her. He connected with his sphere. Lights danced around the heavy chain, and then they dissolved, revealing a delicate silver chain. On the necklace was a tiny pair of sparkling red shoes.

She started to laugh. “The ruby slippers!”

“Dad,” Scott implored, “we have to go _now_.”

“Goodbye, Samantha.” Scott and Paul got into the bus, and the bus disappeared in a less-than- magical cloud of blue exhaust.

Samantha was still standing on the spot admiring the house, the necklace in her hand, five minutes later when Fox arrived.

“Are you with this shelter?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, coming to. “My name is Samantha Eppler. I’m the clinical assistant.”

He flipped his badge at her. “George Fox, Federal Security Agency. Do you have a Paul Forrester here?”

She looked at him, then smiled softly. “Did you come all the way from Washington today, just for him?”

“Miss --”

“Mr. Fox, what are you doing out here on Christmas Day? Don’t you know there’s no place like home?” She burst out laughing and couldn’t quite stop. Fox regarded her impatiently, wondering if she was a resident of the shelter instead being an employee. She came to herself after a few moments and put the necklace in her pocket. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fox. He escaped earlier today.” Fox was beside himself. “You should have called ahead and told us to keep an eye on him. We didn’t know you wanted him.”

He glared at her urgently. “May I borrow your phone?”

She let him into the house. She marveled at the new interior as he used her phone to set up a search and roadblock system with the local authorities. When he finished, he came out into the rec room. 

He looked around at the bright and clean room as the residents, even including Pickens, sang carols around the new piano.

“I’m impressed, Ms. Eppler,” he said with a nod. “This is a nice place you have here.”

She smiled, holding the ruby slippers which now hung around her neck. “Your Mr. Forrester gave us quite a Christmas present.”

Fox looked around at the room, surprised. “He did this?”

“Yes, he did.” She smiled a secret smile. “All of it.”

******

The old hippie dropped Paul and Scott off near the interstate, where they quickly found a hitch on a northbound 18-wheeler. By nightfall, they were in a small motel in Vancouver, Washington.

As they unwound over a modest Christmas dinner made up of leftovers from the motel owner’s family dinner, Scott and Paul exchanged their experiences of the last two months. Scott for his own part found that for once he didn’t feel the need to tell absolutely every detail or to know every single thing his father had done. The important thing was they were together.

Paul listened to his son with appreciation. “It sounds like you learned a lot.”

“Yeah. I made a lot of mistakes, too.”

“That’s how you learn, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Scott looked back over the two months alone. “I guess the worst part was not knowing if you were all right, but the best part was knowing that no matter what happened, I was going to be okay on my own.”

Paul smiled. “I think you’re growing up.”

Scott smiled, then shook his head. “Nah. So what did you learn?”

Paul thought for a moment. “That I like oatmeal when it has brown sugar on top, although maple syrup is better, and that it rains a lot in Oregon, ... and that fear is a very powerful thing. I think I understand now why George Fox has been chasing us for so long. Fear can make humans do strange things. Like treat people like animals. Or make them want to kill. Or make them forget who they are.” He sighed. “Being a human is very difficult.” He looked at his son thoughtfully, then smiled. “I’m glad I have you to teach me.”

Scott smiled. “But, Dad, let me give you some important advice.” Paul leaned forward attentively. “Next time, duck.”

Paul mulled this over. What did a web-footed waterfowl have to do with what had happened?

Scott realized his joke had died on delivery and shook his head. “Never mind.”

The next day, they had Liz Baynes wire them some of the _Light of the Plains_ money, and before they headed north they mailed the Keitzers a box of Swiss chocolates, with Evan’s loaned money tucked inside.

******

When Evan came in to work two days before New Year’s Eve, he found Fox waiting for him in his office. “You’re late,” Fox said with a pointed lack of formality as he stood to face the sheriff.

Evan looked at his watch as he took off his coat. It was three minutes after eight. “Sorry.” He sat at his desk. “I take it you got my messages, Mr. Fox. You know the rules -- 48 hours is the longest I could hold the Keitzers without charges. I’ve kept an eye on them for you, though. They haven’t gone anywhere. And I checked on the tap on the phone. It’s still there.” He looked up at Fox with concern. “Do you still want to press charges against them?”

Fox shook his head with a quiet smile as he sidled over to the office chair. “No. No need.”

Evan sighed gratefully. “Thank you. This whole thing’s been very difficult.”

Fox smiled his predatory smile. “I can imagine. Sheriff, can I ask you a few questions?”

“Sure.” Evan started going through some papers on his desk.

Fox sat, keeping a close eye on him. “Where were you on Christmas Eve?”

“I was at the Keitzers’ until about 10, and then I was with my fiance.”

“I see. Were you two alone?”

Evan looked up from his busywork. “Excuse me?”

“A man matching your description was seen in Dubuque at midnight Christmas Eve helping Scott Hayden escape. At first we thought it was his father, but I’ve had positive confirmation that Forrester was in Oregon at the time.”

“Are you sure it was Scott?” Evan said in professional tones as he went back to sorting through the papers. “Not to pass judgment, but people tend to look a lot alike when they’re dressed for winter.”

“No, we’re sure.”

“Did you a good description of their car?”

“We didn’t see a car.”

“No car? Hhm.” Evan frowned, thinking. “How about their clothing?”

Fox frowned. “Their clothing isn’t important.”

Evan eyed him skeptically. “So what kind of description are we supposed to go on?”

Fox didn’t know how he’d gotten the tables turned on him, but he didn’t like it. “Sheriff,” he said, taking the offensive again, “there’s something else I’d like you to clear up for me. I understand that when you lived with the Keitzers they taught you German. I hear you speak it like a native.”

Evan looked amused. “Who told you that?” He chuckled to himself. “Obviously someone who doesn’t speak German. I learned it 20 years ago to get out of Vietnam and it didn’t work. I haven’t had much use for it since. Anything else I can help you with, Mr. Fox?”

Fox regarded the composed sheriff. He had no proof, and he was counting on Evan giving something away. But he wasn’t even generating a ripple. Maybe he was telling the truth after all. Either way, this was turning into another dead end, and he’d already wasted enough time on these small fry.

Kelly appeared in the doorway. “Evan, Sam Larsen’s on line one. Should I take a message?”

Evan looked at Fox. “Anything else?” Fox gave Evan one last examination, then shook his head. Evan nodded at Kelly. “I’ll take it in a minute.” She left, and Fox got up to go. Evan looked at Fox with genuine gratitude. 

“Thank you again for not pressing charges against the Keitzers. This whole thing has been kind of a nightmare. I wasn’t looking forward to handing them over to the federal prosecutors. I’m grateful.” Fox hesitated, touched by his sincerity. Evan smiled, then indicated a box of chocolates on his desk. “Please have one. They’re Swiss. The best.” Fox looked at the box. “I know it’s a little early in the day, but one won’t hurt.” He indicated one wrapped in foil. “The pistachio ones are great.” Fox smiled and picked it up, unwrapping it on his way out.

Kelly waited until the door was closed, then came into Evan’s office and sat down selecting a chocolate. “I don’t think he likes you very much.”

“I don’t think he likes anybody very much.” He looked at her, growing pensive. After a long moment, he asked wistfully, “How long have we known each other?”

She thought, then smiled. “Since I was in fourth grade and your dad was my softball coach.”

Evan leaned back and smiled. “I’d forgotten about that.” He became thoughtful again. “I owe you a lot. You’ve really watched out for me, and you didn’t have to.” He looked at her with appreciation. “You’ve been a good friend.”

She frowned. “You’re not going to hit me up for money, are you?”

He smiled and crossed his arms. He thought for a moment, then sighed deeply. “Well, I was going to wait until New Year’s when everything had calmed down a little bit, and have everything typed up and all, ...” He looked at Kelly again, then after a moment of thought unpinned his badge and put it on the desk before her as she watched silently. “I’ve never really been able to fool you. I’ve kept things from you, but I’ve never fooled you.” She said nothing. “You know darn well I helped Scott escape.” She didn’t react. “I saw you listening out there. You know everything Fox implied’s absolutely true. ...My only request is that you leave the Keitzers out of this because they didn’t know he was wanted, they only thought they were doing a friend a favor by putting him up.”

She scrutinized him for several moments. “You know you’re looking at about five to eight years?” He nodded. “Does Stephanie know you’re doing this?” He nodded again. Kelly sat for a moment, fiddling aimlessly with the discarded badge. “Yeah. I know what you did. I knew when you showed up on Christmas Day. And I think I know why you did it.” She put the badge down. “And I know what Judge Pennebaker would say. ‘It’s our job to enforce the laws, not interpret them.’“ A small smile crossed her face. “And I know what Sim would have said. ‘As long as you’re my deputy,’“ she growled, mimicking a tough, gravelly voice, “‘it’s your job to maintain my reputation as “Mr. Enforcement.”’”

Evan wasn’t listening. His mind was elsewhere. He was mentally packing his bags for five to eight years of life behind bars. A federal pen wouldn’t be so bad, he thought. At least he wouldn’t run into anybody he’d sent up.

“Sim was such a hard-nose, and then you, when you had a mind to, you’d go out of your way to help people.” She squinted at him. “Mr. Cynic, I’ve seen you secretly putting money in parking meters that had expired on peoples’ cars.” Evan tried not to react, but he was obviously surprised by this. She smiled and held up his badge for a closer examination. “And ever since you made me head deputy, I’ve wondered what kind of sheriff I’d be.” She gave him a sly smile. “I bet you thought I never thought so much, did ya?”

“I always thought you thought too much.”

She laughed and put his badge back on the desk. “You know, your dad was really a great guy. He was the best coach, because while we thought he was teaching us about softball, he was really teaching us about life. He taught us that it’s not winning or losing, good or bad,” she shook her head, then smiled, “it really is how you play the game.” Evan listened intently, wondering what she was talking about. “That changed my life. You know, everybody thinks we named Mike after Mark’s great uncle, but we really named him after your dad.”

Evan looked surprised. “You did?”

“Yeah.” She stood up. “So, you know what that means.”

He had no idea. “What?”

“It means that I know what kind of sheriff I’d make. And if you really want to go to prison, you’re going to have to talk to Laura about this, because as far as I’m concerned, Evan Michael Pierce,” she patted him on the head with a twinkle in her eye, “you passed the HQ test.” She popped another chocolate in her mouth and walked out of the office.

Evan sat for a long moment, a little confused by the sudden turn of events. He stood up and went to the doorway, leaning against the doorframe and looking at Kelly as she went about her business at her desk in the quiet office.

“So no five to eight, huh?”

“No.” She stopped her work. “Unless you insist. In which case this conversation never took place.”

He smiled. “Is Sam still on line one?”

She looked at the phone. “Yup, ...” she glanced back up at him, “... Sheriff.”

As Evan turned back into his office to take the call, he muttered just loudly enough for her to hear,

“I finally figured out why I made you head deputy ...”

******


End file.
